3 ms·
Hah I remember as a 4 year old I discovered a tree crawling with ants, back where I was growing up in the middle of russia. I distinctly remember trying to eat
by seer 3y ago
Hah I remember as a 4 year old I discovered a tree crawling with ants, back where I was growing up in the middle of russia. I distinctly remember trying to eat them, as any self respecting 4 year old would, and discovered they were surprisingly tasty - sour-y, salty kinda taste.
Now this discovery was not totally random, I had heard “stories” that you can poke a branch into an anthill the ants attack it to defend their hive and after a while if you get the stick out and lick it, it would taste sour. Maybe someone was just messing with me as a kid.
Anyway I ran off to my parents to show them my new discovery and was immediately scolded and instructed not to do it again.
But it still stuck with me - ants in that part of the world have flavor, and it’s actually tasty.
- rob74 3y agoI discovered the taste a bit later, while drinking some cola where an ant had fallen in and accidentally biting the ant - tasted very sour, despite the sugary drink...
- mettamage 3y agoA few select high end restaurants use ants for their sour taste. Why specifically ants? No clue. I do know that such restaurants like to switch it up and be a bit unconventional.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoThere is a set of techniques refined and published by noma that have been really influential in high end cooking the last decade. They use koji (the catalyst for miso and soy sauce, among other things) to break down protein and/or starch into sources of deep umami or complex sweetness. The liquid forms of this are being called garum, though it's not a continuity of the ancient food by that name. The original book published a grasshopper garum, but recently I have seen much better ones based on bee brood, and a chicatana ant garum is one of the best things I've ever tasted. They are very complex and unique flavors, nothing is quite like them.
- seer 3y agoIsn’t garum a “fish dissolved in its own gut enzymes” kinda thing? By the at measure - dissolving other organic stuff sort of makes sense as names go.
- giraffe_lady 3y agoYeah I think it's a good name for it. In the past when this has come up I've seen people be disappointed or hostile to it simply because there isn't an unbroken continuous european food tradition between roman garum and this. Which it may sort of imply, I guess. But I think it's a fun repurposing of a good word that was going unused.
- _a_a_a_ 3y agoFormic acid for the sourness I guess.