I’d received them in an unmarked cardboard box from World Entomophagy, the only U.S. company selling food-grade insects to the public. I’d placed my order after reading an article online about a taste test engineered by an entomologist: He gave subjects meatballs made of half meat and half mealworm as well as a control meatball of 100% conventional meat. Surprisingly, most people preferred the buggy balls. That’s good news for the environment, since insects are some of the most sustainable protein around. And it’s also good news for me, since mealworms are high in healthy fats and vitamins A and B. And thanks to a 23-year-old entrepreneur in Austin, I, too could make sustainable mealworm meatballs—without the messy business of growing the bugs myself. World Entomophagy’s founder, Harman Johar, has catered to curious eaters like me since his sophomore year at the University of Georgia, when he started growing mealworms and scorpions in bins stacked in his dorm room closet. (“My roommate was surprisingly cool with it,” Johar says.) Soon after, with the help of a handful of fraternity brothers, Johar took the bugs out of the closet and started a company. No longer limited to hush-hush deals when the RA isn’t looking, Johar now sells crickets, cricket breadcrumbs, “Betty Cricket” pancake and cookie mixes, and sweet and spicy teriyaki cricket snacks online. “It was supposed to be a little thing on the side we were doing for fun,” Johar says. “But it just started growing and growing. Now, we’re easily supplying to a few hundred people.” His bugs have good breeding. They’re all born and raised in Austin, and like many Austinites, they’re fed a strict non-GMO diet. Johar’s team tests each new batch of insects for diseases and parasites by screening those that float during washing and heat-treating all of them. And they practice what Johar calls “good karma killing”: slowly lowering the temperature until the bugs reach a kind of permanent hibernation. They’re dried and processed without chemicals or preservatives. With such cleanly raised bugs, it’s little wonder why chefs and restaurants flock to World Entomophagy’s stash. And even more so when you consider their nutritional profile: Ground crickets are about 64% pure protein. Mealworms are almost 50%—with as many omega-3s as fish. Insects are also incredibly sustainable. They use almost no land compared to conventional meat, and since you can grow them in stackable bins and tubs, insects are the rare kind of livestock that you can raise vertically. Further, growing bugs takes about 1/1,000th the amount of water that beef requires. And insects have a tiny carbon footprint, unlike industrial livestock, which as an industry is the single largest contributor to ozone-depleting greenhouse gases in the world. The potential market is much bigger than adventurous foodies and trendy chefs. Recently, a struggling mother of three in Georgia found Johar’s website, and called him to express her interest in insects. “She was like, ‘We’re having to buy different types of meat because we’re trying to get through a tough time in the family,’” he said. Johar is sending her lots of free products to try, while working on ways to make high-quality bug-rearing less expensive. Here’s Johar’s long-term plan: after he hooks America on bugs, World Ento will donate insects and equipment—like powerless cricket growing units—to famished parts of the world. “You can grow crickets on just about anything,” he said. “It’s a very freeing form of food.” Governmental agencies are starting to see bugs the same way. Last year, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations issued a report hailing insects as the future of worldwide food security. And though the FDA doesn’t currently don’t have any regulations about insects as food, that’s likely to change soon. Johar said the FDA has been in contact with him, but he declined to reveal more details, and the FDA did not respond to a request for comment. Ok, so bugs may be the future—and our most promising protein source might even be in the hands of a 23-year-old frat boy. I could accept that. But looking down at my jiggly package of worms, was I really ready to cook them?
Johar assured me that bugs can be quite tasty when given to the right chef. I am not that chef. My first mistake was bragging to my boyfriend about how brave I was. “I’m not scared! Insects will be delicious,” I told him. I counted on him being grossed out and calling off the experiment. But he’s a doctor, and was more than game to try an alternative healthy source of protein. So we talked about making those highly acclaimed mealworm meatballs together. He, unlike I, actually planned on following through. I suggested making plain turkey meatballs instead, but his mind was set. So on a Tuesday night after work, I tore open the package and plunked them into a bowl.
The first time you breathe in a sack of dead, room-temperature worms is one you’ll never forget. It’s an earthy, bitter perfume, like the excrement of 100 different species. Their texture surprised me, too. I thought they’d be soft and plump and squishy, but they were firm and slick. I slid the crawlers into a colander and gave them a good rinse. “Don’t worry, babe,” my boyfriend told me. “I’ll make sure to heat them to kill off any potential bacteria.” I gave them a good dicing. Tiny tubal exoskeletons flew across the counter as I chopped, but as much as I chopped, I couldn’t make them look like anything but bugs. Next time, if there is a next time, I’ll use the food processor. We made the first meatball batch with half turkey, half mealworms. The mushroomy smell was masked by the garlic, egg, onion parsley, seasoning and breadcrumbs we added, and aside from those exoskeletons, the balls looked promising. (If you squint, they just look like mutant, oversized flaxseeds.)
As those fried up, we started on the 100% mealworm balls. When Johar prepares the worms, he removes all the moisture, leaving lots of protein but none of the gumminess the turkey provided. Without that moisture, the worm balls just wouldn’t stick together. We added a couple more eggs and settled for mealworm nuggets. The tiny mealworms cooked up far quicker than the turkey, and we definitely burned them:
Once everything was done, it was taste test time.
Our experiment wasn’t even close to being well designed, scientifically speaking. Even if we’d juggled the balls around and fed each other in blindfolds, the crunch of the exoskeleton would have been unmistakable. But as for the taste? Ground meat really is ground meat, no matter what the provenance. The turkey-worm balls tasted like almost-normal turkey, with just a slight crunch. Delicious. The 100% wormballs had the texture of ordinary meat, but the flavor of the spices we mixed in. Slightly earthier, drier, and nuttier. And (can I say this in a way that isn’t damning with faint praise?) completely inoffensive. In fact, two out of two doctors who tasted the worms—my boyfriend’s unsuspecting roommate had wandered into the kitchen in scrubs—approved. It’s hard to mess up fried food, though, so we decided we would put them to a more honest test: roasting. I tossed the remaining worms with paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and after a couple minutes on a lined baking sheet, we took them out. During their first seconds cooling on the counter, they curled up like little wriggling synchronized swimmers. We both jumped.
Roasted alone, the insects smelled like the litter box at a pet store stocking only exotic species. Needless to say, the smell of dead worms sweating in an oven is one that sticks with you. Luckily, they tasted much milder, but I’d be lying if I told you they disappeared from the plate as fast as the wormballs did. Will I eat insects again? Most definitely. But maybe I’d read up on flavor pairing for our little protein-packed friends before attempting my next experiment. I hear there’s a food cart in San Francisco specializing in a salted cricket tostadita with mashed avocado, toasted sunflower seeds, and pickled red onion. Could I pull that off? Stay tuned. I have a frozen package of baby crickets in the freezer.
