Slugs — They're what's for dinner

In yesterday's Washington Post "Urban Jungle" feature, Patterson Clark focused on the common leopard slug, found wherever gardens flourish.

He described the biology and life cycle of the creature and then went off on a most interesting tangent: are slugs potential food for people?

He wrote, "Since thay have little or no shell, slugs secrete much more protective mucus than do snails, but some people see them as unpackaged escargots. However, several factors may give pause to the potential slug chef:

• Slugs should never be handled with bare hands, let alone eaten raw. From contact with rat feces, slugs may carry a parasite that can cause a potentially fatal brain disease in humans. Thoroughly cooking a slug — or a snail — should destroy any dangerous parasites.

• Slugs are more likely to eat toxic fungi than are snails. Slug harvesters are advised to purge the poison from captive slugs by feeding them grain meal and lettuce for many days before cooking.

• Soaking slugs in a vinegar/water solution will kill them and remove much of their mucus, but the cooking water must be changed a couple of times to get rid of all of the slime. The foul-tasting digestive gland in the slug's tail should be removed after cooking.

Clark's piece concluded, Bon appetit!

But we're just getting warmed up.

My Crack Research Team™ decided to pursue this topic and at the end of an in-depth article on slugs as food by Deane Jordan on EatTheWeeds.com found a recipe, which follows.

......................

Ingredients

10 cooked and cleaned large slugs

1/2 cup of cornmeal

1/2 cup of flour

3 eggs

1/4 cup of heavy cream

4 tbs. of butter

4 tsp. of sour cream

 

Instructions

First chop the slugs into fine mince, then add to the eggs and beat together with the heavy cream. Sift the dry ingredients and then add two tablespoons of butter to that mixture. Add the egg and cream mixture to the dry ingredients and whip with a whisk vigorously for one to two minutes. Melt one tablespoon of butter in a sauté pan and pour the batter into 2-1/2 inch cakes, in two batches. Serve warm with a dollop of sour cream. Yields four servings.

.......................

Not up to a major culinary effort like that detailed above, but still hankering for slugs?

For you, Jordan has a simpler suggestion: "Slugs that are still unpalatable after boiling can be fried until crisp and tried, or ground into a flour and added to other meals for nutrition."

More: "According to an article in the August 2006 Journal of Experimental Biology, raw slugs are 5.1% carbohydrates, 0.5% fat, 7.1% protein and 85% moisture. After cooking they are probably lower in carbohydrates, most of which are contained in the mucus lost in cooking."

Wrote Jordan, "Slugs were in the diet of many Native Americans in the northwest U.S., where they have some 27 different kinds. German immigrants to that area gutted them and fried them in batter."

Is it lunch time yet?