If you've got cleaned, cooked seafood that smells like fish shit, you're at a shitty restaurant. My only takeaway from this is that we should really see if we can make terrestrial insects taste as delicious as we make aquatic insects taste.
oh there's some tasty bugs out there already. people are just too squeamish about it.
For me its mostly the legs/heads. I dont fuck with heads on anything and legs need to be way bigger for me to be interested. I'd try one of those fly/mosquito burgers tho.
Randomly looked through comment history and found this, so....
Here's my favorite:
You ever had shrimp n bacon bbq beans with ancho and chipotle bbq sauce? Probably not because it's kinda my proprietary recipe but it's dead simple and amazing. couple cups of beans, cup of a good bbq sauce heavily seasoned with ancho, chipotle, smoked paprika, white pepper, into a fry pot with a 4 strips of bacon previously fried in and chopped coarse, simmer until thick and then add your peeled shrimp right at the end to cook,
I hate to tell you this, but no matter how they prepare the crustaceans, the little black line towards their back end...
Idk where you're getting the nowhere does info, unless it is a regional thing somehow. I don't think I've ever seen a restaurant not devein things, and only a couple times have I seen people leave them in for home cooked stuff
I'm not even a fan of seafood, but my understanding is that anything of notable size will be deveined. Unless you're talking little popcorn shrimp sized things, which for that I think they "purge" and then call it good enough because with all the seasoning/breading there wouldn't be enough to notice.
Again, nothing I have any interest in eating, but I've watched a lot of cooking shows.
crustaceans and insects are two different things, not real complicated. The crustaceans have actual meat, not a fluid filled exoskeleton.
I dunno... Have you ever opened a crab up before cooking it? It's pretty much all goo inside an exoskeleton.
While it is inaccurate to characterize crustaceans as bugs, they are arthropods and share an enormous amount of anatomical and psychological features with insects. Both have open circulatory systems and use hemolymph to hydraulically operate their limbs. That "meat" that you're talking about is only really visible after cooking, and consists mostly of denatured and congealed hemolymph.
Insects also have muscles in certain locations throughout their bodies. You'll find the exact same structures in similarly structured insects, just on a smaller scale. Honestly I have no idea what you're talking about because they both have muscles and both have open circulatory systems, both will solidify into "meat" when cooked. I'm not sure what you're suggesting meaningfully distinguishes them here other than their taxonomic classifications and their size.
Well the latter have more "meat" on them, whereas bugs are mostly just "shells" once they die. You aren't eating the shells of crustaceans, you're eating the innards
You got a point, but the kind of bugs eaten in some parts of the world are usually the fatty kind .
See, at a glance, that thing looks disgusting. I have an instinctive revulsion to the thought of eating it.
I guess some people would say the same for whole live shrimp though, and I grew up fishing them out of the sea and boiling them up in a pot.
Uncooked sea bugs looks unappetising as well
So I guess the same would apply to the uncooked land bugs. They will look better cooked.
The bottom ones have delectable white meat inside. The top ones are all brown guts and crispy, musty shell. Nobody is shelling crickets for a worthwhile piece of meat inside like you do a shrimp or a lobster.
They look similar to bugs, sure. But let's not pretend it's the same thing.
Sounds to me that the common preparation is to just blend them into a powder at which point they're just a non descript protein rich powder
Well yeah, this would be a poor substitute for meat, but I haven't really seen it suggested as such, just as another way to introduce protein.
We're pretty close to creating real synthetic milk by means of modified bacterial culture.
If we can have real milk, cheese, whey protein etc. from cheap feedstock in fermentation vats, I don't see a single reason why someone would choose bug powder over that as a protein source.
What do you mean? Milk is a complete protein mening it has all 9 essential amino acids. It also has them in good amounts in proportion to what humans need. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5149046/
A physiologically-significant increase in the rate of muscle protein synthesis requires adequate availability of all amino acid precursors. The source of EAAs for muscle protein synthesis in the post-absorptive state is the free intracellular pool. Intracellular free EAAs that are available for incorporation into protein are derived from muscle protein breakdown. Under normal conditions about 70% of EAAs released by muscle protein breakdown are reincorporated into muscle protein. The efficiency of reincorporation of EAAs from protein breakdown back into muscle protein can only be increased to a limited extent. For this fundamental reason, a dietary supplement of BCAAs alone cannot support an increased rate of muscle protein synthesis. The availability of the other EAAs will rapidly become rate limiting for accelerated protein synthesis. Consistent with this perspective, the few studies in human subjects have reported decreases, rather than increases, in muscle protein synthesis after intake of BCAAs. We conclude that dietary BCAA supplements alone do not promote muscle anabolism.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5568273/
EAA - Essential Amino Acids
Even if that was true, that's assuming your diet consists of only dairy. No beans, grains, meat, eggs... You could easily say the same for the bug powder.
However if you're going to eat a diet based on one thing, make that thing dairy. It does contain all the nutrients required to grow a calf at a massive rate, and a human as well. In my youth I did the GOMAD diet for awhile to put on bulk, and the results were incredible. Milk is close to an optimal food, it evolved to be exactly that.
That only works for people of northern European stock, literally evolved to survive a winter on milk and stored potatoes. The rest of us are lactose intolerant for the most part, and besides that, cows milk will literally kill an infant, you need goats milk in that situation.
In asia the bugs are often put with other condiments, lollipop, spices etc... to make them taste something.
And they are mostly like snacks. I don't know any culture that have them take the place of a meat in a dish.
TL;DR: disgust is learned.
- How Do Toddlers Learn About Disgust
- Is moral disgust socially learned?
- Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behavior
Bottom line is that while there are things that we're hard-wired to reject, the rest is more about what social groups teach us at a young age. Also, we can overcome the hard-wired aspects to an extent, again through social reinforcement.
Oh I can explain it easily! One of them tastes good and the other one tastes bad. That's pretty much it... Not sure how it's so confusing though
Have you ever tried insects? Those who have have said that they taste good. They said it tastes like shrimp.
Those who have have had a different day of taste buds. With insects you're supposed to eat the exo skeleton, which is crunchy, but not nice. Then the meat is a bit nutty, is ok but the texture is off putting imho. Maybe eating your shrimp unpeeled would be a good equivalent.
I eat shrimp unpeeled. Learned to do it from Vietnamese restaurants. It's not bad! It saves a shitton of time peeling them, the spices are usually on the outside so you get more flavor, and the shell gives a nice crunch. I don't eat the tailfins tho that's dumb. They're hard, pointy, and have no meat.
That said... I advocate for finding ways to incorporate insects into western diets. I think we need to start a program to breed them for purpose though. Just like how bananas used to be small and full of seeds but were bred to what they are today. Breed a grubworm or something to be better eatin' and grow them in huge quantities. But no way am I eating a roach.
I've tried crickets and ants before and they were decent with a ton of seasoning but it sure as hell wasn't as good as lobster.
It's a big deal in Oaxaca and they're not bad. They add a ton of lime and salt and other seasonings. I had them when drinking Mezcal. The ants are really big too. Apparently they have like a spawning period where they're just everywhere so you can just scoop them up and put them in a skillet really easily.
Sorry to any actual big scientists. I'm sure I butchered that.
If I am to believe the tellings from It Came From The Desert, there could be ants as big as a house.
Can't imagine if I were to eat ants. Grasshopper I can imagine. But ants... I come from Indonesia and there we have small ants that smell like shit..
I live in a fishing town, and I used to love crab, until I was adult and it was my turn to prep them. The first time I turned a crab over and saw the bottom, where all its freaky little legs connect, I had a real "oh god this is either a bug or a space alien" moment. I can't stand crab anymore, just the thought of it makes me feel nauseated. Lobster too. Somehow shrimps are okay, though.
Bro... Shrimp are bait. How can you be grossed out by crab and then pinch a shrimp in half XD? I myself like all the water bugs... But land bugs are still gross.
Land bugs mostly have pretty blend or bad taste, regardless of their looks anyway. In Asia they often add spices to make them taste something.
It's a bit like snails too, it's not that tasty itself, the only reason it's good is because it tastes like the butter and garlic we put in.
And for both it's mostly the texture that's off putting. Some people can grow used to the texture though.
I can see it, I grew up fishing for both too and shrimp are so easy and casual to twist and shuck off the shell and chow down, while crabs are all armored up and feel a lot more like eating an alien being.
A tasty alien being, though.
No land bugs for me either, they're just full of goo inside. I like my animals full of meat, personally.
It's gross sure but i never understood how that would make someone stop eating it. For me no matter how gross something is the taste is the only thing that matters.
Other examples, rabbit's brain, black pudding, or in general how we kill most animals to make steak... It's always creepy, gross or a bit disturbing, but it never changed my taste for it.
If all the meat on earth disappeared tomorrow, I would become a vegetarian before ever knowingly consuming a bug.
What if they were raised in a hermetically sealed environment, dried out, ground into a fine powder, then added to batter to make pancakes?
Lol this is something I do from time to time. Cricket flour is available where I live and it makes great breakfast pancakes!
I've had crispy dried grasshoppers that were chill once, and some BANGIN cricket tacos in NYC.
They're actually pretty great for protein.
But aren't billionaires completely sick in the head? I'd be careful with a claim like that
This is my thing as well.
If they had shrimp sized grasshoppers that came peeled and deveined, heads removed...with a nice sauce to go with it?
I'd at least try it.
Some of the offal is quite delicious IMO. Like the scallop's skirt (where the eyes are) surrounding the meat, and gonad (the orange or white sac) are great, and don't actually have any sort of fishy taste if that's not your thing.
I watched a yt clip of a scallop boat in the US where the guy was cleaning the scallops by cutting out the meat and throwing the rest away and it just seemed so wasteful! A lot of countries don't throw the rest of it away.
Some of the offal is quite delicious IMO.
Japanese cuisine contends that offal, like fish liver, is sometimes the best part. Monkfish comes to mind. Also, some people really like crawfish and lobster liver.
Hot take: Blue crab offal is where some of the aroma and flavor comes from when you steam them. Especially the "mustard" (although that's not recommended these days - see "bio-accumulation"). The innards, except the gills, are fantastic stacked on a saltine with some Old Bay seasoning and vinegar on top.
In Japan they call the crab or lobster liver (the tomalley) miso, I guess because it looks like miso (well, lobster tomalley doesn't really because it's green, but they're not native to Japan anyway). It's not uncommon to find the gunkan style sushi with crab miso at a lot of shops.
In case your serious that you don’t get it. The bottom pic is all crustaceans that are more closely related to insects than fish.
Op is saying they don't get why many ppl frown upon eating terrestrial insects but do eat aquatic ones.
Of note, insects diverged from the arthropod line that would become crabs, lobsters, etc in the beginning of the Carboniferous or late Devonian, a solid 350-400 million years ago. This means crabs and grasshoppers are more distantly related to each other than humans and frogs.
But you can eat a crustacean in a satisfying way without eating it's head, offal, or poop.
80% of the countries find them tasty, I for one have not tried insect, at least not on purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/04/health/insect-rodent-filth-in-food-wellness/index.html
...That's the point they're making....
They don't get how we like to eat water arthropods but not land ones...
Stamets, do you want me to catch the 4 inch cockroach that I've been raising free-range in my apartment and send it to you to find out? It's on a non-GMO diet.
Most people are definitely quite squeamish about eating unshelled shrimp. This feels like a strawman.
If that is actually the case, I wonder if Horseshoe Crabs taste different today, than when they evolved? The oceans were much more salty back then.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018206002483?via%3Dihub
