NEW YORK (1010 WINS/WCBS 880) — Cicadas are on the menu. Or at least they should be, says Brooklyn chef and edible insect ambassador Joseph Yoon.
In two periodical broods, different than the cicadas that appear annually in smaller numbers, a trillion magicicadas will emerge across the Midwest and South over the next six weeks.
“I don’t like to call it an invasion because it sounds so negative,” Yoon said on WCBS 880’s Newsline with Brigitte Quinn. "I like to call it the emergence because I think it’s just so beautiful and amazing.”
The Great Southern Brood and the Northern Illinois Brood, beside each other geographically, are appearing this spring in a dual emergence that at the end of the cycle will not appear for another 221 years.
“I imagine in those areas there are going to be a lot of specials with cicadas coming up,” Yoon said, referring to the approximate 18 states where the cicadas will be.
Yoon is the owner of Brooklyn Bugs, a business of ambassadors that tours globally with funding and grants from universities, museums and institutions to share the potential of edible insects, innovation in insect agriculture and the impact these food systems can have on food security, sustainability and health.
The inspiration to start cooking with insects came to Yoon because of an artist who was interested in conquering her fear of insects by eating them, and now he has developed an array of flavorful cicada-based recipes like cicada kimchi, crunchy tempura-fried cicadas and, for a sweet option, chocolate-covered cicadas.
“I think we can virtually make any dish that we really want, and the only limitation we have is with our imagination,” Yoon said.
While less common in the U.S., entomophagy—or eating insects—is a normal global practice, with insects serving as a source of protein and the basis of both traditional and exploratory cuisines.
Being an edible insect ambassador means sharing entomophagy with unfamiliar diners, which is part of the fun for Yoon.
“They expect it to taste gross and bug them out and instead they’ll try and be like, oh, this tastes like food,” he said. “It’s been a really interesting, eye-opening sort of experience.”
Magicicadas, the broods that are emerging, aren’t going to be available to NYC chefs unless they travel to forage, but Yoon advocates for the incorporation of edible insects into all kinds across local food systems and beyond.
