Mealworm mince pies and the invasion of the flies...

Too excited to wait until I had harvested enough to use extensively, I fried up my first small harvest of mealworms and tasted them.

I would describe them as tasting akin to a peanut-flavoured popcorn. Very light with a distinct taste of their own and almost like a shrimp in terms of texture. I was very happy with how they taste on their own; I had expected them to be bland and require plenty of flavour to be added. However, the simple, lightly fried product was great. 

Fried mealworms - tasted like peanut popcorn

To get into the seasonal spirit though, I decided to add them into some mince pies. The recipe for these is below and is a great twist on the classic festive treat:

1¼ lb (560 g) mincemeat Handful of mealworms

12 oz (350 g) plain flour

6 oz (150 g) butter

pinch of salt

For the top:

a little milk

icing sugar

Preparing the mince pies

Beautiful mealworm mince pies, complete with pastry mealworm

These mince pies went down well at work and with friends as they tasted  great and the mealworms were largely unseen. I'm hoping that this introduction will make any future mealworm consumption less of a psychological hurdle. More recipes and response from people I test them on to come in future weeks...


Meanwhile, outside, in the box that I had let stay there to see what happened to the larvae in the cold, I found a disturbing scenario had evolved.

Looking into the box, I could see numerous small flies crawling over the oats and rotting veg. On closer inspection into the detritus I found alarming numbers of fly larvae. They are quite distinct from the mealworms - they start as pale, slightly fatter mealworms but are akin to a worm in the way they move (the mealworms move like beetles with a long body). The older fly larvae are redder and resemble a true worm even more.

The invasive fly larvae - younger white and older red specimens

Due to this invasion I have left this box to act as compost and will use it in the Spring for fertilising.

In the news, there was an interesting article in the Huffington Post about what the author thinks, for vegans, is the "obligation" to eat insects due to the impact of growing crops on animals.