How to cook a cicada, according to the Butterfly House ‘Bug Chef’
CHESTERFIELD, Mo–The Sophia M. Sachs Butterfly House in Faust Park hosted a cicada cooking class today with the “Bug Chef,” who cooked up two popular shrimp-based dishes, but instead with cicadas.
Tad Yankoski, “Bug Chef” and senior entomologist at the Butterfly House tossed together butter, white wine, lemon juice and pan-fried cicadas, highlighting a classic scampi dish.
Then, whisking together cake flower, corn starch, an egg and seltzer water Yankoski dipped cicadas into this tempura sauce to make a cicada tempura dish.
“We always recommend that you boil the cicadas first,” Yankoski said. “You want to boil them for about two minutes that’s going to sterilize their outside since they do come out of the ground.”
Yankoski advises if you are allergic to shellfish to not eat cicadas because they are so closely related.
“After boiling for a couple minutes, you can cook them however you want,” Yankoski says. “You can turn them into desserts, you can fry them, or bake them however you want.”
When Yankoski isn’t cooking cicadas, he the senior entomologist at the Butterfly House. A normal day for him consists of taking care of their insect collection.
“I spend most of time keeping our insects alive and healthy and then every once in a while we do a little bug cooking on the side,” Yankoski says.
Yankoski says the act of eating insects is very common world-wide and many people eat insects as a normal part of their diet. In the United States, he says, it is not as common.
The act of insects insects is also known as entomophagy, according to the Butterfly House. Yankoski says eating insects such as cicadas do have health benefits like calcium and iron.
“With the boom of cicadas we thought it would be good time to plant the seed that there’s a lot out there that we could potentially be including in our diet,” Yankoski says.
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