(2021-05-11) The Cicadas Are Coming Lets Eat Them

The Cicadas Are Coming. Let’s Eat Them! Lai plans to serve the cicadas in a paella, on a pizza, and as a sushi ingredient. He’s going to make some using indigenous preparation methods, too. “Cicadas taste a bit like nuts, as many insects do, but with every bite, my nose is reminded of popcorn, too,” he says.

When toasted grasshoppers made the menu at Seattle’s T-Mobile ballpark for Mariners games in 2017, they quickly became a top-selling concession. You can find Chirps chips—made from crickets—at grocery stores across the country, including regional chains like ShopRite and Mom’s Organic.

Yoon is using Brood X to get people pumped about creepy-crawlies. Over the next few weeks, he’s planning to catch hundreds of thousands of cicadas

She’s partial to chocolate-covered cicadas, but says that savory recipes can be tasty, too—it all comes down to how they’re prepared. “You want to remove the legs and the wings,” she says. “Those aren’t particularly nice.”

Lai, on the other hand, is a fan of the wings

“Depending on how you prepare the 17-year cicadas, and the life stage that they are at, they can be chewy or have the crispiness of pan-fried trout skin,”

Although he cautions against eating pregnant females before they lay their eggs, he admits to tasting their caviar, which has “the creaminess of a miniature éclair.”