Pittsburgh Culinary Students Practice Cooking With Crickets

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PITTSBURGH (KDKA) - Chef Shawn Culp and culinary students at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh prepare a four course meal. Common ingredient? Crickets.

"What we have here basically is culinary entomology," says Culp, the chairman of AIP's culinary department.

Frozen crickets were shipped here by Big Cricket Farms of Youngstown, Ohio. Founder Kevin Bachhuber says they're raised in plastic boxes.

"The crickets live in the boxes, within egg cartons to give them some housing, food and water. And you know, they do most of the work for us."

In a world where two billion people eat insects, we're the oddballs. Student chef Steven Slocum says he was skeptical.

"At first, I was a little weirded out."

Now that he's tried them, he's changed his tune.

"I would eventually like put it into my restaurant, and try to introduce it a little more."

Chef Culp introduces the appetizer.

"Cricket pesto. We made a basil and parsley pesto, that is enhanced with the crickets."

The main course is cricket crusted beef, with horseradish. But there are no baked crickets on the twice baked potatoes.

"I didn't want to over-cricket the dish," the chef explains.

That just wouldn't be cricket.

"If I had to describe the flavor," he says, "I'd say, kind of nutty."

Toasted crickets are clearly the "pest de resistance."