Pasta Made of Crickets

(Image: AFP)

You can grind up cricket bodies and turn them into flour. You can then use this flour to make pasta. That's how you end up with this delicious-looking radiatori. It's high in protein that the human body can easily digest.

The Independent describes how one artisanal pasta shop in Thiefosse, France is using cricket flour to revive its business:

“The name of the ingredient may be a turnoff, but it's really delicious, especially with game meat,” smiles Alain Limon as he spreads cricket-flavoured fusilli on a drying rack. […]
His boss Stephanie Richard began her homemade pasta business in 2012, and is now hiring again thanks to the success of her latest creations made from insect flour.
“The insect is the protein of the future,” Richard says. “It's protein of high quality that is well digested by the body.” […]
For Richard's unique pastas, she uses pulverised crickets and grasshoppers, sometimes mixing the two, and sometimes mixing ground cepes with cricket flour.
“There's a kind of nutty taste thanks to the cepes, making it taste more like whole wheat pasta,” Richard says.

If you want to buy some cricket pasta for yourself, the online store Bugsolutely appears to have you covered. Of course, if you're more sporting, you'd try to catch the crickets yourself.

-via Nerdcore

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Thank you, that's a very informative answer. I appreciate the response!

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Hi Ron, may I invite you to read the nutritional evaluation that we received from a University professor specialized in nutrition. We also have a similar evaluation from a food technician. As for the sodium, the percentage matters in relation to the presence of potassium, as explained by our expert (http://www.bugsolutely.com/nutritional-profile-cricket-pasta/#comment-385). I am the founder of Bugsolutely, the producer of Cricket Pasta (no need to hide that, I believe in what I am doing!)

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Hi Alan, crickets are farmed for human consumption and that is also a requirement from FDA. I may challenge you to demonstrate what is the difference between a cricket and a shrimp, but I understand it will take time before subconscious fears are removed.

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. . . and when you're on the trail, you can have some high-protein Chapul energy bars!
http://www.chapul.com/

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I'm currently on a medically-supervised fast to lose weight, and in a few months I'm going to need to learn to live with a diet that is far lower in carbs than what I've enjoyed in the past. So I'm looking at this and thinking... protein pasta? I don't care if it's crickets, sign me up!

But then I look at their nutritional information and find that while it does contain almost twice as much protein as regular pasta, the carb count is practically the same. What's more notable is that it contains 30 times the sodium! Wow. Takes a lot of salt to make cricket palatable, I guess.

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