Cicada Cookbook: Turn cicadas into delicious snacks, meals and desserts for family and friends

Welcome to a unique culinary adventure that explores the extraordinary world of cooking with cicadas. This year, we are graced with not just one, but two broods of these remarkable insects, offering a rare and exciting opportunity for culinary enthusiasts to experiment with an ancient, sustainable, and nutritious food source. Cicadas have been consumed for centuries across various cultures, celebrated for their delicate flavor and impressive nutritional profile. In this cookbook, we will guide you through the fascinating history of cicada cuisine, provide essential tips for harvesting and preparing them safely, and present a diverse array of innovative recipes that showcase their versatility.

Cicadas are large winged insects that emerge in large quantities on the eastern United States every seventeen years. They are not grasshoppers or locusts, but they are in the same family of bugs.

Over the past two years, the forests of the eastern United States have experienced an unusual quietness during late spring and early summer. Typically, the region resonates with the sounds of periodical cicadas, but a recent anomaly has left these insects noticeably absent since 2021. However, this year marks their dramatic return.

In 2024, two distinct broods of periodical cicadas will emerge simultaneously across much of the eastern United States. These insects follow a remarkable life cycle, emerging every 13 or 17 years for a brief, intense period of mating and egg-laying before the adults perish, leaving the next generation to develop underground. This ancient cycle is a well-established aspect of the region's ecological fabric. This spring, both a 13-year brood and a 17-year brood will appear in overlapping areas, creating a particularly rare and spectacular natural event.

If you have never considered eating cicadas, try the recipes in this book and you will see just how delicious and tasty they can be. Some can call these tasty critters the shrimp of the earth. Try to catch the cicadas as they are just emerging from the ground. This is when they will taste the best. At first the males are better to eat, but after mating, the females can be enjoyed as well as they are full of eggs.

This cookbook is full of delicious and tasty cicada for everyone's taste.