Worms?

[PurpleHeath]

i have just had a question from one of my friends which i cannot answer.
are worms edible? if so what kind? and if they are has anyone got a recipe for worm stir fry?

 

[pierre girard]

i have just had a question from one of my friends which i cannot answer.
are worms edible? if so what kind? and if they are has anyone got a recipe for worm stir fry?

If you mean angle worms or night crawlers - I wouldn't suggest it. Grubs are edible - not bad in fact - and as available as worms.

PG

 

[PurpleHeath]

any type! do have a recipe? i would like to try some but i would ahve to pluck up the courage. i don't think that i could eat them first time without cooking them first, or does that spoil the taste?

 

[torjusg]

Worms are said to be edible, and full of fat! I have just heard of steaming them to a mass. But YUK!! I wouldn't eat it.

Torjus Gaaren

 

[nooky]

It said in one of my old survival books that you could eat worms (cant check for sure as im at work). If I remember your cleaned them and then squeezed them from one end to the other (to remove the dirt and gunk out of them and then you can eat them). I know I tried it when I was a teen and it didnt have any ill effect.
Im sure that there will be someone alot more qualified than me that can correct me if im wrong.
Andrew.

 

[Goose]

Worms are edible, I have eaten earthworms cooked and raw.
I don't think there is much fat in them but they have high percentage of protein, more than beef for example.
The worm itself is no problem but you have to be wary of what the worm has just been eating , you can purge them by putting in salt water for 24 hours before. I cooked them by parboiling then drawing them through my fingers to remove the grit and soil then added them to an omollette, they have no real taste to them so aren't unpleasant.
I have seen them purged by placing in a container with edible, dandelion, leaves for a while.

I have eaten normal earthworms and have had no problems but there are lots of types, as far as I know they are all edible but I am no expert, so be careful and remember what worms eat through and what chemicals could be around where you collect from.

 

[pierre girard]

any type! do have a recipe? i would like to try some but i would ahve to pluck up the courage. i don't think that i could eat them first time without cooking them first, or does that spoil the taste?

For grubs? Just pop them in your mouth. Never done anything else with them. Real hunter gatherer stuff. My brother loves them. I'll eat them if I'm hungry. Grasshoppers and locusts are also mouth poppers.

Little story: My brother got involved with some kind of survivalist group when he was young. They weighed everyone and set them off in the woods for two weeks with a blanket, a piece of parachute silk, and a jacknife. After two weeks, they gathered everyone and weighed them again. My brother had gained six pounds. Everyone else had lost considerable weight.

My brother's quite an outdoorsmen. When he was 15 he and another guy paddled their canoe from our place to the arctic circle. The year after that - he lived in a wigwam for a year (summer and winter) on our back 40 - just to see what it would be like. I'm a pretty fair woodsman, but nothing like my brother.

PG

 

[Nemisis]

Ok then get him to write the book lol

 

[WelshTriffid]

I've got friends in the marines who had worm omlettes during training and theyre both still here

Would rather just have the omellete myself as I wouldn't have thought they'd have much nutritional value (well not as much as the eggs )

 

[ozzy1977]

I am sure I have en someone on tle eat them in an omlett also, dont thing it was Ray Mears, it might have been Lofty Wiseman on sky home &leisure. but it is doable with no ill effects if purged before.

 

[Abbe Osram]

I read that they are quite nice to eat, especially if you feed them with some nice herbs for a while. They collect that stuff in their guts and taste quite great so I heard, but I havent done it yet. But it was reccoment to starve them or feed them to get a better taste into them.

cheers
Abbe

 

[Brian Curnel]

I have always had a tough time with insects..mental I guess. How do you oercome that issue? I know if your hungry you'll eat no matter but just to sit back and munch on a grub??? hmmmm tasty? I dunno.

 

[JonnyP]

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, just cause I eat worms
Long ones, thin one, fat ones, short ones all kinds of worms
Bite their heads off, suck their juice out, throw their skins away
Nobody likes me everybody hates me, just, cause, I, eat, worms

Cor.........Takes me back to primary school...............Jon

 

[WelshTriffid]

LOL

 

[Ketchup]

I read this years ago, but never tried it.

Put earthworms in a box with flower; They will stuff themselves with flower and get rid of other gut content. The next day, you sieve them out and fry them with some butter in a pan... hey presto: inverted canneloni!

This recipe comes from a 'professional lombriculturists magazine'. in the early '80s, earth worm culture was thought of as a business with a future. The critters produce more protein per acre grassland than stupid cows, in some areas as much as 10.000 Kg/Ha.

 

[Ed]

As posted by a couple of people here, you need to purge them before you eat them as dirt irritates the stomach and can cause problems.... Most people have a mental block when it comes to eating worms because of they way it looks, ie it looks like a wiggerly worm with the standard reaction is 'I'm not putting that in my mouth.... YUK'.

Simply dry them out in the sun / low heat over a fire and grind them down into a powder.... makes a great stock for soups and stews..... think of it as bushcraft OXO


Ed

 

[redcollective]

My brother's quite an outdoorsmen. When he was 15 he and another guy paddled their canoe from our place to the arctic circle. The year after that - he lived in a wigwam for a year (summer and winter) on our back 40 - just to see what it would be like. I'm a pretty fair woodsman, but nothing like my brother.

Get him on here!

 

[PurpleHeath]

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, just cause I eat worms
Long ones, thin one, fat ones, short ones all kinds of worms
Bite their heads off, suck their juice out, throw their skins away
Nobody likes me everybody hates me, just, cause, I, eat, worms

when i was in the woodcraft folk we sang that it was my favourite song!!

our version is a little diffierent through!!

Nobody like us,
everybody hate us,
because we live on worms.
Big fat juicy ones,
Skinny, whinny, whinny, whinny, one
See them riddle and squirm.
Nobody known’s how much we thrive on worm three times a day.

the first one was squeezy,
the second one was easy,
the third one got stuck in our throats, (cough, cough)
the fourth was like a sausage roll
and the firth one made us choke


i was 6. thats my excuse anyway!

 

[Longstrider]

It seems that quite a number here have heard of eating them but only a few have actually tried it. I can add my name to the list that have eaten worms, and I'll add that I thoroughly enjoyed them. We just left them in a small billy can half filled with salted water overnight to purge, then made sure they were "empty" by gripping the head end and running them through the fingers of the other hand with a milking action to squeeze any residue out of the gut. Flash fried in hot fat they were delicious and took the place of bacon on our very wild camping trip. I was told years ago that they are actually better for you than steak as they have very little fat, and are very high in protein.

The worms we had were the big lobs, the ones that those in the U.S. call night crawlers. They are easy to gather on a mild, damp night (preferably after a light rain) when they come to the surface and lie there with their tails just inside their holes. You need to tread softly, and pounce on them when you spot them in the torch-light. The slightest vibration or any over-bright white light (I use a red filter on my worming lamp) will see them disappear back down their holes at amazing speed. Pin them between finger and thumb at the end closest to the hole and g-e-n-t-l-y ease them out of the hole in time with their body spazms (I think it's called peristalsis) I've gathered them in this way for years to use as fishing bait and have often been able to gather as many as 500 in a nights worm hunting. Best place to gather them like this is on mown grass like a lawn, but field edges are very productive as long as the grass is short enough to let you see them and get to them before they sense you and disappear.

 

[Abbe Osram]

I remember catching them with my dad when I was a kid.
He needed them for his fishing trips and was using a dangerous but very effective way of catching them. He sprinkled some water on the short cut grass.
and put two iron sticks into the ground where he attached power cables to shoot 220 V into the ground. After a while all the worms came out of the ground and he switch of the electricity and we went to collect them from the grass.

I guess today it might be forbidden as everything got a law attached but back in the early 70th nobody bothered.

cheers
Abbe