Thursday, March 28, 2024

Crickets fans out for dukka

Neal Wallace
Skye Blackburn confidently says she’s the only person in the world with university degrees in entomology and food science. The combination, which stemmed from a love of bugs and food, was totally unplanned but fortuitously led to the creation in 2007 of Australia’s first edible bug shop.
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Such is the growth in demand for edible insects Blackburn is scaling up weekly production from 200kg of finished product to 10 tonnes with eyes on exports to Asia.

Finished product ranges from fresh or roasted crickets, ants and mealworms to ground powder, dukka, seasoned salt and snack packs.

Prices are NZ$5 for a 2ml vial of dehydrated ants, containing about 35 ants, $16 for 20g of roasted crickets, $37 for 200g of cricket protein powder and $68 for 80g of roasted mealworms.

The business happened by accident, in part from the necessity for the new graduate to get a job.

She saw the growth of edible insects and was aware they are widely eaten in Asia and that Thailand has 20,000 community-owned cricket farms where insects are served daily in school lunches.

So she did some investigating and ended up developing a business.

NOVEL USE: Cricket tortilla chips made from cricket powder.

The Edible Bug Shop had products on display at the recent Rabobank Farm2Fork summit in Sydney and Blackburn says a bug farm is very much like a laboratory complete with a quarantine area.

Inside a disused warehouse the bugs are farmed in large bins in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment and fed food waste.

The company employs five people.

It is a six-week process from breeding to harvesting before the insects are killed by reducing the temperature.

The company sells added-value and raw products to food manufacturers for use in baking, chocolate, sweets, tortilla chips, granola, yoghurt and salt.

She raises ants, mealworms and crickets and says they have a slightly nutty taste.

The cricket powder is 69% protein and contains micronutrients, vitamins, fatty acids and Omega 3.

Her stand provided samples of banana bread cooked with cricket powder, which tasted just like banana bread made with traditional ingredients.

Blackburn says her immediate focus is growing export markets but she sees the eating of bugs in the west as similar to sushi, something that will become an acceptable daily experience.

“It will become the norm and you will start seeing it in supermarkets but people will have to become educated in how to use it.”

However, people allergic to shellfish can have a similar reaction to edible insects.

 

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