The stick-legged, buzzing and bug-eyed insects are coming — but you can do your part to exterminate cicadas: eat ’em!
Billions of Brood II cicadas are set to hatch this spring, bringing a once every 17 years plague to most of the East Coast. The deafening insects will mate and then die over the course of about six weeks, making an unmistakable racket the entire time.
But some foodies embrace the insect onslaught, using the high-protein, nutty flavored bugs in all sorts of dishes, from tacos and pizza to cookies and even a martini.
“It’s not that different from bottom dwelling sea creatures,” said Jenna Jadin, who wrote a cicada cookbook 9 years ago as a graduate student. “Shrimp and lobster eat garbage and they are the insects of the ocean. If we eat those without much afterthought, why not eat insects?”
In just a few weeks, you’ll have your chance. The noisy critters will emerge mid-May, said Gene Kritsky, a cicada expert who has written two books on the insects, who will use their four to six week adult lifespan to sing, mate and die. The key to harvesting the bugs for eating, he said, is when they are newly hatched, called tenerals, sometime in the early morning. They should be white and still soft, with the females and their distinctive pointy abdomens the most appetizing and nutritious because of their protein-filled eggs.
In 2007, when the 17-year cicadas struck the Chicago area, cook Marilyn Pocius held a “cicada potluck” — tagline “I ate a cicada and I don’t have to eat another one for 17 years.”
The resulting entries were an incredible array of creativity — cicada sushi, JELLO, pizza and even chocolate chip cookies.
“I will say that they tasted pretty good—mild and nutty like peanut butter,” Pocius told the Daily News by email. “And of course they were delicious when battered and deep fried. But then what isn’t?”
Eating the insects dates back to at least the Iroquois Indians in upstate New York, Kritsky said. The tribe would dig up the young insects and dry roast them. Kritsky recalled a 1906 article in the Cincinnati Enquirer that described a Baltimore tradition of “seasonal cicada pie.”
“The only recorded judgement from someone on it was, ‘It’s good eating,'” Kritsky said.
Like the Iroquois, Dutch professor Marcel Dicke has openly endorsed insects —- not just cicadas — as an alternate, cheap food source for an ever-growing human population. He released an “Insect Cookbook” last year and encourages insect-eating as an alternative to meat as a protein source.
Jadin tempered that a bit, saying there isn’t much research on bugs, especially the periodical cicadas, which sit in the ground 17 years and could build up pesticides and other poisons that in large quantities could be toxic. We do unwittingly eat insects every day, she said, as factories that process food like peanut butter or tomato soup almost always have insects that get mixed in — they just can’t pass a certain bug content threshold. There are even some places, like in Thailand, that farm-raise insects on a commercial level, she said.
As a member of the “Cicadamaniacs” in 2004, Jadin compiled a cookbook with 15 recipes, from Shanghai Cicadas to El Chirper Tacos and Southern Cicada Tartlets.
And Kritsky has tried them deep fried in batter with cocktail sauce, blanched in a salad and in a cicada stir fry. The dishes left him with the taste of “cold canned asparagus” or a raw potato.
“I had an undergraduate professor whose thinking was always that if it’s commonly eaten by birds, he always tried it,” Kritsky said. “I don’t make (eating cicadas) a habit. I’m too fond of them to want to eat them all the time.”
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Some recipes courtesy of the “Cicadamaniacs”:
El Chirper Tacos
Ingredients:
2 tablespoons butter or peanut oil
1/2 pound newly-emerged cicadas
3 serrano chilies, raw, finely chopped
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground pepper or to taste
1/2 tsp cumin
3 tsp taco seasoning mix
1 handful cilantro, chopped
Taco shells, to serve
Sour cream
Shredded Cheddar cheese
Shredded lettuce
Directions:
1. Heat the butter or oil in a frying pan and fry the cicadas for 10
minutes, or until cooked through.
2. Remove from pan and roughly chop into 1/4 inch cubes. Place back in
pan.
3. Add the chopped onions, chilies, and tomato, and season with salt,
and fry for another 5 minutes on medium-low heat.
4. Sprinkle with ground pepper, cumin, and oregano, to taste.
5. Serve in taco shells and garnish with cilantro, sour cream, lettuce, and
Cheddar cheese .
Yield:
2 main course servings
Cicada-Rhubarb Pie
Ingredients:
4 cups chopped rhubarb
1 cup fresh cicadas, washed and any hard parts removed
1 1/3 cups white sugar
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Maryland Cicadas
Ingredients:
1/2 cup Old Bay(R) Seasoning
2 tablespoons salt
4 quarts water
1 (12 fluid ounce) can beer (optional)
8 red potatoes, quartered
2 large sweet onions, cut in wedges
2 pounds lean smoked sausage, cut in 2-inch lengths
8 ears fresh corn, broken in half
4 pounds large cicadas
Directions:
1. In an 8-quart pot, bring Old Bay, salt, water and beer to a boil. Add
potatoes and onions; cook over high heat for 8 minutes.
2. Add smoked sausage to potatoes and onions; continue to cook on high
for 5 minutes. Add corn to pot; continue to boil for 7 minutes. Add
cicadas, cook for 5 minutes.
3. Drain cooking liquid. Pour contents of pot into several large bowls,
shallow pails or mound on a paper-covered picnic table. Sprinkle with
additional Old Bay if desired.
Yield:
8 servings
