Chiang Rai: Shades of Chicken

Back when I was traveling Malaysia, I had a conversation with a few fellow backpackers regarding exotic foods. I can’t remember who with but it went something like this: Each of us would bring up the strangest food we’d eaten and described its taste. While most of us used chicken as a standard of measure (like chicken with soy sauce, or deep fried chicken) to get the message across, one of the guys was a little bit more creative. He said that he had alligator, which tasted somewhat like ostrich.

Anyway, I really didn't accomplish much today aside from hitching a ride out to Chiang Rai. So, for the sake of doing something interesting, I went to the night bazaar and picked up a bag 'o random deep fried insects.

I’ve laid out the experiment high school biology style to keep things as objective as possible.

Hypothesis: Bugs taste like chicken

Materials (as per diagram):

1. Bag of fried bugs
2. Towel for cleanup (as kindly provided by guesthouse)
3. Moral support
4. 50 ml Listerine
5. 1.5 L purified (through reverse osmosis) water
6. 1 pack (40 pieces) Extra minty chewing gum
7. “Ultra V” vomit cup
8. Bugs for taste test (see fig. a)

Fig. a

a. Silkworm
b. Mole cricket
c. Cricket (regular)

Procedure:
Eat bugs
Try not to throw up (use provided cleanup materials if step fails)
Describe taste

Observations:
Silkworm
Appearance: Beige, with soft membrane revealing partially formed pupae. Not a worm in its truest sense but equally as unappetizing in appearance.
Taste: Squishy creamy filling had a chicken/peanutty taste. Unpleasant texture made the item difficult to swallow.

Mole cricket:
Appearance: Like feces but with legs and a head (sounds good, doesn’t it?).
Taste: Crunchy shell tasted OK, with the taste and consistency of a crunchy chicken wing tip but with soft meat inside.

Cricket:
Appearance: Lightly browned shelled insect completely formed with head, thorax and legs.
Taste: Tasted more like fried shrimp with its shell on than chicken. Completely crunchy. Not bad at all, actually.

Conclusion:
I suppose one could argue that shrimp tastes like chicken, in which case, all of the tested insects tasted like chicken.