Are insects the next culinary frontier?

Ant-infused gin and cricket consommé could be the next big thing in food, according to a highly-regarded French cooking school.

A woman holds her nose while tasting the cricket consommé

Le Cordon Bleu, which was founded in Paris 120 years ago, has come out on the side of bugs saying that they are good to eat and good for the environment, as reported by FoxNews.com.

Cementing its belief, and inspired by local eating habits in Southeast Asia, the French cooking school’s Bangkok branch recently held a seminar entitled “edible insects in a gastronomic context”. The event, which was fully booked, saw chefs and food scientists experimenting with creepy crawlies to create flavours they say could open a new gastronomic frontier. With their juices extracted for essence or pureed into batter, the insects were not visible as such in the final product.

The event included lectures and a tasting menu for 60 guests which included student chefs, scientists, professors and insect farmers with specialities including ant-infused gin followed by a shot of warm cricket consommé and hors d’oeuvres of cockchafer (a giant beetle) butter and herb crisp.

Christophe Mercier, who helped organise the event, said: “We didn’t want to just put a bug on a salad and say, `Voila!’ We wanted to know, can we extract interesting flavors, new textures, aromas and turn it into something delicious? This is the first time that insects have been granted access to the Cordon Bleu.”

Apparently the school’s entrance was decorated with tropical flowers and bowls of bugs for the event, which included crickets, silk worms, bamboo worms and live water bugs as “big as a toddler’s hand”.

Earlier this year Laithwaites Wine published an insect and wine guide, pairing mealworms with Viognier, locusts with Moscatel and crickets with Albariño.