As Switzerland prepares to legalise three insect species for food, we talk to one Finnish researcher on the best ways to process mealworms and crickets to get the optimal flavour and texture profile.
Insects are still awaiting novel food authorisation in the EU although this has not hampered innovation with a number of European companies already up and running and profiting from a legal grey area in certain cases.
The overall attitude seems to be that while it’s not an easy regulatory environment to navigate, this trend is about to explode and entrepreneurs don’t want to miss out even if the novel food deadlock means that bricks and mortar retail channels are closed with sales instead coming from online shoppers.
One door in Europe is about to open, however
On 1 May this year Switzerland is will legalise three species of insects for food, allowing mealworm larvae (Tenebrio molitor), adult house crickets (Acheta domesticus) and adult migratory locusts (Locusta migratoria) to be sold both whole and in pieces.
The insects must have been bred specially for food purposes, have undergone the relevant procedures to eliminate pathogens such as freezing and the food packaging must bear both the common name and the scientific name.
One of the small European nation’s biggest retailers, the Coop, has already announced it will sell burgers made with insects sourced from Swiss firm Essento.
Taste, texture and fractionation
But what are insects actually like to work with as an ingredient?
At FoodMattersLive last year FoodNavigator spoke with British startup Next Step Foods how it makes its Yumpa bar. “Cricket flour is relatively easy to produce,” said the company’s founder, Tony Askins. “Basically, crickets are chilled, blanched, baked and then milled. This minimal process is very popular with consumers.”
Meanwhile at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, food scientists have been experimenting with ways to process insects. It has developed a dry fractionation method which produces insect fractions with varying flavours and textures.
Research Scientist at VTT Katariina Rommi told FoodNavigator: “In the fractionation process, dried insects are defatted by supercritical carbon dioxide extraction, finely milled into a powder and separated into the coarse and fine fractions by air classification.
Insect fractions effectively bind water and fat making them particularly suitable as ingredients in solid food, VTT said
Source: Food Navigator
