How to eat a scorpion in style
December 12, 2016 9:36 AM   Subscribe

 
I am strangely reminded of that issue of Lucky Peach that had "the apocalypse" as its theme. Amid articles about pollution and living off the grid, they had recipes for things like Jellyfish and bugs.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:43 AM on December 12, 2016


Olde joke: Did you know that no one has ever actually died from a Scorpion bite?
posted by sammyo at 9:48 AM on December 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


lil roasted scorpion dude looks like he wants fisticuffs
posted by beerperson at 9:55 AM on December 12, 2016


"Olde joke: Did you know that no one has ever actually died from a Scorpion bite?"

That joke's so bad, it stings!
posted by I-baLL at 9:59 AM on December 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


people who insist that bugs are the future of food are suspiciously gleeful about the prospect of having to eat bugs to survive
posted by Gymnopedist at 10:04 AM on December 12, 2016 [11 favorites]


Roasted crickets are pretty great as a garnish or as a spice and crunch delivery device but I wouldn't like to eat a whole sandwich of them. The difficulty and general futility of separating bugs from their chitin is a huge barrier to them becoming a larger part of people's diets. Like, I love a fried shrimp head as much as the next food weirdo, but I'm not gonna make them for a casual picnic or a relaxing dinner, and when I do eat the shrimp heads my dining companions are never jealous.

These utensils are a cool art piece and have reminded me that Dali's Ménagère cutlery set exists so they get extra points, but I suspect a bug-laden diet isn't going to happen until we breed the bugs and/or invent the recipes and harvesting techniques to allow people to use the same kinds of cutlery we've been using. Like, what kind of bug would be best suited for those machines they have on fishing boats that steam and peel the teeny tiny shrimpmeat shrimps before they even get to shore? What would the resulting product lend itself to? Some kind of bugburger or popcorn scorpion ball thing?
posted by Mizu at 10:22 AM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


The advantage of the scorpion finger-tongs is that you can also use them to fight the hunter-killer drones as you cross the post-apocalyptic wastelands.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:35 AM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


people who insist that bugs are the future of food are suspiciously gleeful about the prospect of having to eat bugs to survive

Not surprisingly, bugs think people are the future of food. Should be an interesting apocalypse.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:40 AM on December 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


David Cronenberg, table for two. Near the oubliette, please.
posted by JohnFromGR at 10:55 AM on December 12, 2016


The ad in the middle of the AO page was a guy in a Pikachu outfit throwing a net over some children, which seemed like an odd pre-dinner task for the future of post-apocalypse eating , but who am I to say?
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:59 AM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


So ... chopsticks ...?

Honestly, the lack of stylish cutlery is not the reason I'm not eating whole fried scorpions. I don't eat chickens whole either.
posted by tiaz at 12:03 PM on December 12, 2016 [8 favorites]


You know how you can get those cans of little tangerine slices in syrup? I used to wonder how they peeled the outsides off those things. Then I googled it and discovered that they just stick them in a solution that dissolves the outsides and leaves the flesh intact. I think something like that's gotta be the future of bug meat.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:07 PM on December 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


Listen, I don't even like lobsters or shrimp that much, I'm not gonna put a scorpion in my damned mouth by choice.
posted by tobascodagama at 12:12 PM on December 12, 2016


The thing I don't get about the bugs-are-the-future-of-meat people is this; don't you think most people would just rather be vegetarian if real vertebrate meat was unavailable? I know I would.

Also, the issue with bugs and disease is always glossed over. Insects have pretty crap immune systems. Try to culture them for a long time at high density and I can't see you avoiding having your crop wiped out by cordyceps or something.
posted by Mitrovarr at 1:03 PM on December 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


Well, you need to get B-12 from somewhere, and there are very, very few viable non-animal sources.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:15 PM on December 12, 2016


Since B-12 is produced by bacteria, I'd guess it's pretty easy to whip up in a lab.
posted by Mitrovarr at 1:30 PM on December 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


Enthusiasts have badly overstated the conversion rate at which crickets turn their food onto human accessible protein, compared to chickens.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:32 PM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


...don't you think most people would just rather be vegetarian if real vertebrate meat was unavailable? I know I would.

Excuse me, coming through.

I need to get in line behind Mitrovarr.
posted by BlueHorse at 1:41 PM on December 12, 2016


So ... chopsticks ...?

Yeah, this kind of looks like it was designed by someone who just wanted some steampunky chopstick-like things and needed an excuse.
posted by thefoxgod at 1:47 PM on December 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


B12 can be and is whipped up in labs. I know because I keep my B12 levels solid by supplementing cheap B12 whipped up in said labs.
posted by Gymnopedist at 1:53 PM on December 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


B12 can be and is whipped up in labs.

But think of how much more fun it would be to alter, say, crickets to have a full day's supply of vitamins! Like chewables with a nice crunch and a slightly smoky flavor!
posted by GenjiandProust at 2:43 PM on December 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


If you're going to GMO, just do it to rice, corn, or soy. It's probably all us peasants are going to end up eating anyway.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:56 PM on December 12, 2016


Until we turn on each other in a bloodlust frenzy due to lack of animal protein. I'll take bugs, please.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 3:08 PM on December 12, 2016 [2 favorites]


The Leite's Culinaria article linked towards the end of TFA would have been worth an FPP on its own.

Saint Peter Damian on the death of the woman who introduced the fork to Europe: “Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth. . . . this woman’s vanity was hateful to Almighty God; and so, unmistakably, did He take his revenge. For He raised over her the sword of His divine justice, so that her whole body did putrefy and all her limbs began to wither.”
posted by The Horse You Rode In On at 3:22 PM on December 12, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm not a vegan, but i gotta think that if meat becomes too expensive/unsustainable, people will just switch to eating more beans and veggie burgers before they start eating things generally associated with venom (scorpions) or decay (beetles and worms).
posted by wibari at 5:12 PM on December 12, 2016


Yeah, all of what I've seen of insect ingestion has been related to the super-trendy end of food. Like, places and critics in New York rave about them.

But can you get past the stigma of eating bugs? Imagine the revulsion of people thinking that their McDonald's big mac is half insect. That's huge, and powerful. And if it's not in fast food then it's going to be relegated to Goop or Whole Foods which means it'll be overpriced and out of the reach of common people. Neither of which really sounds great.

It's great protein, but so are black beans. And if it's between black bean burgers and insect burgers, the choice is pretty obvious. A great place to start.
posted by Neronomius at 5:56 PM on December 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


Yeah, it doesn't seem much different than those tiny whole crabs that some guy named Damien at Nobu keeps sending over "from the chef".

Crunch, crunch, whatever. Anything works with enough sriracha.
posted by rokusan at 6:29 PM on December 12, 2016


people who insist that bugs are the future of food are suspiciously gleeful about the prospect of having to eat bugs to survive

The lizard people are real, and they're hungry.
posted by rokusan at 6:30 PM on December 12, 2016 [5 favorites]


I wonder which is ultimately more feasible: large-scale bug-generated protein or vat-grown meat?

Because personally, I'd rather have a juicy vatburger.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 6:51 PM on December 12, 2016 [4 favorites]


See there's a reason almost all cultures don't eat insects and the like already, and it's because they're disgusting no matter how you tart them up.

I include prawn, the insects of the sea, in this.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 10:47 PM on December 12, 2016


Well, I love these utensils but I grew up with family obsessed with Victorian silverware so i can tell the difference between a sardine fork and a strawberry fork and had proper tomato servers even at a regular dinner. So I love that this exists.

I've had those cookies made with cricket flour and other random "hipster" insect bites, as mentioned above. They're fine. It's not really different from shrimp, theoretically, but there would be more of a mental issue for sure. Plus I keep thinking of Snowpiercer. I would try, though.
posted by jeweled accumulation at 11:08 PM on December 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


See there's a reason almost all cultures don't eat insects and the like already

Except that a lot of cultures do eat insects, making all of the statements about how they universally disgusting and worse than a vegetarian diet pretty damn amusing.

For example, grasshoppers and grubs are eaten in many locations in West Africa, and in some places, when a certain species of caterpillar comes into season, the price of chicken drops by half because people really, really like the caterpillars, and stop buying chicken. The taste is thought to be especially delicious.

We in the West have this idea of bugs as a food of "last resort," something that you would only eat if you were really hungry and there were no better options. But that's, like, a really culturally bound perception.

And of course which bugs people eat is also culturally bound, just like for other types of meat. Our intuitions about what is disgusting, immoral, or just plain delicious are a product of where we grew up. You have to be really, really careful when assuming something like "bugs are disgusting, and that's why no one eats them." Because they're not universally disgusting, and people eat them happily.

And yes, I know that most of you are just talking about the overcoming the stigma that it has in the West, which is a reasonable point/concern. I'm talking about the universal statements.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 7:14 AM on December 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Except that a lot of cultures do eat insects

Yeah, it's pretty uninformed to say "well bugs are icky so nobody eats them." That's not even close to true.

Human insect-eating is common to cultures in most parts of the world, including North, Central, and South America; and Africa, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. Over 1,000 species of insects are known to be eaten in 80% of the world's nations. The total number of ethnic groups recorded to practice entomophagy is around 3,000. However, in some societies insect-eating is uncommon or even taboo. Today insect eating is rare in the developed world, but insects remain a popular food in many regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania... FAO has registered some 1900 edible insect species and estimates there were in 2005 some 2 billion insect consumers worldwide.

posted by showbiz_liz at 8:12 AM on December 13, 2016


“Nor did she deign to touch her food with her fingers, but would command her eunuchs to cut it up into small pieces, which she would impale on a certain golden instrument with two prongs and thus carry to her mouth

saints describing eating is just like the Mallory Ortberg bit about human sexual intercourse described by aliens unfamiliar with the concept. a little more repressed fascination, maybe

it also sounds like she was eating with a golden fondue fork which is a little showy so I kind of get where peter damian was coming from although he was, of course, a dick
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:04 AM on December 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


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