Yummy Recipes
Earthworm Cuisine
If you are feeling a little bit adventurous, why not try cooking up a tasty earthworm treat with your students. We have never tried any of these recipes first hand, but we have heard from other people that they are quite good. All of these recipes come from the book 'Entertaining with Insects (1976)'. Worm Watch in no way accepts responsibility for any squirmish indigestion mishaps which might occur. Cook at your own risk!!!
Earthworm Cookery
Although most people use the term insects to refer to all sorts of creatures, it really only applies to a particular animal group: the six-legged arthropods. Earthworms are legless and therefore are not insects.
Earthworms have received considerable attention in the press recently as an excellent and
potentially economical source of human food. From all accounts, they are a nutritious addition to human diets. Besides being high in protein, they are entirely edible, with no bone or gristle to throw away, and their subtle, earthy flavour lends itself well to all sorts of delightful dishes.
How to Clean and Prepare Earthworms (from Entertaining with Insects, 1976)
Your earthworms will probably not require purging if you buy them from a dealer who packages them in peat moss for shipping. Earthworms eat and expel material equal to their weight every twenty-four hours, so the worms will have essentially only peat moss in their bodies. By the time you get them, any material they had been raised on would probably have been purged from their bodies. The small amounts of peat moss that one would be eating with the worms would be negligible. One might even rationalise that the additional roughage would be a good for you anyway. For any further purging, place them in moist cornmeal, flour, or similar material for 24 hours. In this way you can be certain that the worms will be clean inside and out and ready to cook.
Earthworms may be kept for a few days in the shipping material if kept under refrigeration or in a cool place. Temperatures above 60oF are harmful to earthworms. The shipping material should be kept moist. You should clean your earthworms immediately after receiving them.
Place a handful of earthworms on waxed paper, and remove the dead ones. Look for true
movement, and not just movement caused by a live worm moving against a dead worm. After removal of the dead worms, place a handful of worms in a colander. Rinse vigorously with cold water. If handled too hesitantly they will crawl through the holes in the colander, complicating the process. Place on paper towels and pat dry. The worms are now ready to use in your recipes, or may be packaged and frozen for later use. We can package them in one-half-cup quantities in plastic sandwich bags. One cup of earthworms weighs approximately one-half pound.
The rinsed worms are generally boiled before inclusion in any recipe. They may be boiled for as little as ten minutes, although some earthworm chefs will boil them as many as five separate times for ten minutes each time. They may then be incorporated directly into the recipes or they may be placed on a cookie sheet in a 200o oven for 15 to 30 minutes. They may be used whole, chopped, or as a flour. The flour is most easily prepared by use of a blender.
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