The many flavors of edible ants

https://www.acs.org/pressroom/presspacs/2024/march/the-many-flavors-of-edible-ants.html

by geox • 2 years ago

57 51 2 years ago

Chicatana ants are so incredible. They're a seasonal delicacy in Mexico and have a great nutty, proteiny, chocolately flavor.

SV_BubbleTime• 2 years ago

I ate some in Oaxaca. Mine were fine, but nearly lost it from the intense flavor. Still don’t know if hers were actually different or just our tongues. Strangest thing.

The grasshoppers were fairly good, though only in moderation.

canadianfella• 2 years ago

Who is her?

com2kid• 2 years ago

My toddler was amazed when I introduced him to edible bugs (grasshoppers in our case, but we have a jar of ants around as well).

His eyes lit up, it was like a toddler dream come true! Bugs he could eat!

Related, recently I accidentally ordered some blood soup at a restaurant[1], and when he asked what it was I was about to say "blood, icky" but I remembered to not let my cultural biases predetermine what he ate, so I let him try some instead.

tl;dr Toddlers love eating ants.

[1] The menu listed it as shrimp cake soup, blood was a major ingredient that was not mentioned. Given every soup above it did list blood cubes, I should have asked.

random_kris• 2 years ago

The many flavors of people...

UncleEntity• 2 years ago

Almost like Adam Ant joined The Cannibals?

moralestapia• 2 years ago

No idea why you got downvoted. Unusual, yes, but not a bad thing.

teekert2• 2 years ago

As a toddler my wife was known for lifting up rocks and just picking and eating all the crawling things.

It’s our culture that removes these tendencies :). We still have the occasional good laugh about this story.

postepowanieadm• 2 years ago

Cultures in most parts are rational when it comes not to eating specific things, when it comes to animals/insects it's mostly about parasites.

mzs• 2 years ago

One of my earliest memories is of eating a bug.

lwhalen3• 2 years ago

Hard pass. Happy to leave edible bugs to the globalists, I'll keep my steak, thanks.

blovescoffee2• 2 years ago

what does this even mean, the globalists? anyways more ants for me!

papertokyo2• 2 years ago

I almost want to leave peoples' minds closed about this kind of thing to avoid an increase in demand. I don't want my Sal de Gusano doubling in price either.

rsynnott• 2 years ago

If anything, you'd expect 'globalists' would be, at least passively, on the anti-ant side; globalisation has tended to diminish regional cultural practices.

(As far as I can see, though, most people who use the term 'globalists' (vs globalisation) are actually using it to mean essentially a reheated version of Nazi conspiracy theories, so, well, who knows.)

giraffe_lady3• 2 years ago

It's a far right conspiracy theory about jews, of course. It always gets mentioned in this context because the other part of it is a fantasy about there being a plot to enslave people and force them to eat bugs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalism#Right-wing_usage

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/31/1166649732/conspiracy-theory-...

lwhalen3• 2 years ago

It is published World Economic Forum propaganda to move the global population away from eating meat, to eating bugs, for 'sustainability' reasons. Similar to 'you will own nothing, and be happy'. Kinda interesting to see who dismisses it as a conspiracy theory when it's published on the WEF website:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-migh...

papertokyo2• 2 years ago

They are researching the use of certain ants as flavor enhancers. Mexicans know a thing or two about making food delicious, and Chicatana ants are used in Oaxacan cuisine to add complexity to sauces. Rest assured, this is entirely based on merit of the price-to-flavor ratio and not a conspiracy to replace your steak.

F-Lexx• 2 years ago

As if the World isn't complicated enough already, some people feel the need to add complexity to their sauces.

defrost• 2 years ago

Digging out Honeyants to eat in recess during primary school is more a local thing than a globalist thing .. it's not even woke, it's just free candy.

dekhn• 2 years ago

Every time I get ants around my desk I notice their strong, unpleasant smell (probably formic acid, but maybe some alkanes?). If I even brush a surface they've walked across, I can smell it. It's quite unpleasant and I can't imagine wanting to use it in cooking.

tekla• 2 years ago

The article is partially about dealing with this issue.

ByQuyzzy2• 2 years ago

This is so heckin' cool, I love science.

withants• 2 years ago

with ants

zoklet-enjoyer• 2 years ago

Go vegan

seer2• 2 years ago

Hah I remember as a 4 year old I discovered a tree crawling with ants, back where I was growing up in the middle of russia. I distinctly remember trying to eat them, as any self respecting 4 year old would, and discovered they were surprisingly tasty - sour-y, salty kinda taste.

Now this discovery was not totally random, I had heard “stories” that you can poke a branch into an anthill the ants attack it to defend their hive and after a while if you get the stick out and lick it, it would taste sour. Maybe someone was just messing with me as a kid.

Anyway I ran off to my parents to show them my new discovery and was immediately scolded and instructed not to do it again.

But it still stuck with me - ants in that part of the world have flavor, and it’s actually tasty.

rob74• 2 years ago

I discovered the taste a bit later, while drinking some cola where an ant had fallen in and accidentally biting the ant - tasted very sour, despite the sugary drink...

mettamage• 2 years ago

A few select high end restaurants use ants for their sour taste. Why specifically ants? No clue. I do know that such restaurants like to switch it up and be a bit unconventional.

giraffe_lady3• 2 years ago

There is a set of techniques refined and published by noma that have been really influential in high end cooking the last decade. They use koji (the catalyst for miso and soy sauce, among other things) to break down protein and/or starch into sources of deep umami or complex sweetness.

The liquid forms of this are being called garum, though it's not a continuity of the ancient food by that name. The original book published a grasshopper garum, but recently I have seen much better ones based on bee brood, and a chicatana ant garum is one of the best things I've ever tasted. They are very complex and unique flavors, nothing is quite like them.

_a_a_a_• 2 years ago

Formic acid for the sourness I guess.

throwup238• 2 years ago

Turns out you can find some of these on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Yerbero-Chicatana-Chicatanas-Guacamol...

Dunati• 2 years ago

There is a distillery in Cambridge UK that makes a gin flavoured with formic acid from ants: https://cambridgedistillery.co.uk/products/anty-gin

It's expensive, but the taste isn't really distinctive (unlike their truffle gin, which is very unusual).

Razengan• 2 years ago

My only quibble with eating corpses whole: Are they clean?

i.e. what happens to the poop inside their bodies? See with shrimp you "devein" them to remove the intestines before consumption.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrimp_and_prawn_as_food#Prepa...

master-lincoln2• 2 years ago

as Wikipedia notes, this is just for aesthetic reasons. It's neither poisonous nor tasting intensively

somishere• 2 years ago

We have a lot of green ants around our house (otherwise known as a weaver ant, mentioned in the article). They're a little aggressive but fascinating creatures all round and great for a nibble, tho I tend to only eat the bum ... tart but satisfying.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaver_ant

BaculumMeumEst• 2 years ago

We're already talking about how great it's going to be to eat the bugs? That wasn't supposed to happen for years. Which one of you morons leaked the script?

optimalsolver• 2 years ago

Honeypot ants are particularly edible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_ant

piva00• 2 years ago

I've eaten some Amazonian ant in Brazil which tasted very similar to lemongrass, was surprised how tasty they actually were.

somedude8952• 2 years ago

When I was a kid, I once diluted some dark raspberry syrup in a glass of water. After mixing I discovered there were tons of ants in there. I drank it anyway and the ants were really sour like lemon pulp when you bit on them. I think them steeping in the syrup helped. It was really tasty!

gopal_virtual• 2 years ago

I don't recall the bread, but ones in childhood my cousin brother had me eat ant eggs. It's sour-n-sweet in taste. No yuk memories though.

The many flavors of edible ants

Related Stories