Who likes to eat dog food, cat food or otherwise or worse...poop!? Not me. If you plan to eat bugs, you should know what they had to eat!
What makes a bug a Gourmet Bug and not a bait bug or a reptile feeder bug? The difference is in what we feed them. Gourmet Bugs should only be fed something you would eat and not be allowed to live in their frass, at least I think so.
We're going to take it a step further, starting with mealworms and find out what culinary herbs these insects might like to eat as supplements to their moisture intake. Common items added to mealworm bins are slices of potato, carrot, apple, etc. The mealworms are said to take on the flavor of what they eat and so with other insects, so what if we could create Lemon Balm or Basil Crickets, Thyme Grasshoppers, or perhaps Lavender Mealworms? Just tossing out ideas and it will of course depend on finding specific herbs that a specific bug will eat.
We might create healthier bugs by giving them certain herbs such as the common yard weed, Purslane, which contains high amounts of Omega 3.
The possibilities are endless. I believe what is to be called a "Gourmet Bug" should not only pertain to how it is prepared in the kitchen but the whole life of the bug.
A common practice is to "purge" insects before preparing them, either by not feeding for a time or feeding with clean, known vegetable matter for a few days. Hasn't anybody ever heard of accumulation of substances? If a bug has been fed dog food containing preservatives or chicken mash with antibiotics or whatever all of its life, I seriously doubt a 24 hour fast or even several days of clean lettuce is going to flush possible accumulated substances or whatever from the bug body.
Every Gourmet Bug I produce for human consumption is going to be treated as if it were a bug I myself would eat without worry or hesitation.
That's all I have to say about that! :)
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