How Can I Eat Slugs?

My father had the unfussiest palate of any human being I have ever met; he could and did sample rattlesnake, jack rabbit, weeds, insects, and anything my mother chose to serve, including intentionally burnt cabbage, and peanut butter and mustard sandwiches. I have tried to emulate him. Although I spent my first fifteen years picking bits of onion out of salad and turning my nose up at a lot of meals (remember, I had a mother who served peanut butter and mustard sandwiches), I have come a long way. No longer am I a fussy eater, and in this respect, I would make my father proud. But to my knowledge, he never ate slugs, and neither have I. I'm not saying I never would, but it would take a lot. Like the sort of horrible hunger I hope to never experience.

Then, some time after my post about slugs, I saw that someone had found my blog after googling the following question: How can I eat slugs? (You've got to love the ambiguity of that question!) My post about slugs was just a load of venting after they'd scarfed my pumpkin seedlings, but this was something I have wondered about for ages: given that eating escargot is seen as fairly posh and sophisticated, why not eat garden snails, properly prepared? And if garden snails can be eaten, then why not shell-less snails, or slugs?

Okay, I'll tell you: because of the ewww factor. When you encounter escargot, the ewww factor has been reduced to virtually nil. You tend to be in a posh restaurant, dressed in your best. The escargot are served piping hot with loads of butter, herbs, and garlic, in a fancy little dish, by someone who may make more money than you do. Never mind that they are a little rubbery; that as you chew, your imagination may stray to the garden path, along which many things may be found, such as dog-do, bird droppings, and what my cat buries; you're in a nice place, you've got loads of French bread to sop up the garlicky butter with, and you've got wine. Lots of wine.

Take away the good silverware and the cute little dish, the wine and warm, crusty French bread and all the other accoutrements -- and you've got a rather creepy, though endearing, little garden pest exuding slime.

Still, I fought off the ewww response and examined this intellectually. I have met people who claim to have eaten a lot of snails and slugs: every Japanese person who lived through the war has a story about hunting for garden mollusks. A Korean friend who lived through the war as a child remembers her mother and brothers going into her garden to dig for slugs and snails in the snow. There are countless tales of POWs eating slugs during the war -- roasting them in Borneo, boiling them in Burma. People have eaten slugs and survived, so why don't we do this?

So I did some googling of my own and found the stories of two contemporary non-starving men who have eaten slugs. And boy, are they interesting.

The first story is from Sydney, Australia. In 2003, a student swallowed two Leopard slugs on a bet, thus earning himself 20 Australian dollars and a nasty case of meningitis. Tests found that the meningitis was caused by a worm normally seen in rat lungs but carried as larvae in slugs and snails. Doctors had to drain fluid from inside the young man's skull, and he spent two and a half weeks in the hospital. It was five months before he was able to resume his normal lifestyle. Apparently, children have died from meningitis after eating slugs, and others have contracted it after eating lettuce contaminated with slug slime.

Okay: meningitis. That's a really good reason not to eat slugs. But you can get trichinosis from eating raw pork. You can get BSE from eating beef, even if it's cooked; you can get a nasty parasite from eating gefilte fish. So the problem here isn't eating slugs, it's eating unprepared slugs.

The next slug-eater is Tim Pearce, Assistant Curator and Head, Section of Mollusks, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and a total hero in my book. Because he doesn't just swallow slugs raw on a dare; he tells you how to do it right.

Unfortunately, after reading about how to do it, all I can say is that I hope I'm never reduced to eating slugs. But I'm going to tell you how anyway because this is a full-service blog.

Apparently, the digestive gland of some slug species is foul-tasting. But not to worry -- it can be removed while cooking by making "a longitudinal slit in the tail and peeling the skin back, then either pulling off or cutting off the dark- colored...gland." I read on, open-mouthed, about recommended slime removal, achieved by putting live slugs into a 50-50 water/vinegar solution. "The solution," Dr. Pearce tell us, "is fatal to the slugs in a few minutes, and in the process, they exude most of their slime. Also, when you are boiling them, change the water after a minute or two to remove further slime."

Dr. Pearce also points out that slugs generate more slime than snails, perhaps as a defensive measure since they don't have shells. (Works on me.)

"After they are cooked (and the digestive gland removed, if necessary)," writes Dr. Pearce, "you can use the slugs as you would clams (e.g., slug chowder); be creative." If necessary, dear God. How do you find that out?

I am not making fun of Dr. Pearce. In fact, I sincerely admire him just as I admired my father, who could eat ants and rattlesnakes. Also, I'm betting that if we watched clams prepared, say, or other food we deem perfectly acceptable, we'd be as grossed out as I am by the thought of desliming slugs or removing their digestive glands. Or --(feh!)-- slug chowder.

Anyone want some nice vegetable soup?