How to use insect meal?

At Jimini’s we have been making edible insect food products since 2012! We have a range of different products: sweet and savoury seasoned whole insects (perfect for aperitifs with friends and other everyday snacks) and sweet and savoury grocery products such as granola, pasta, protein bars made with insect powder!

“Insect flour” but how is that possible? You know wheat flour, buckwheat flour, chestnut flour, even spelt flour! But you have never heard of insect flour!

We tell you more!

Also known as insect powder, it naturally has the nutritional benefits of whole insects, in higher concentrations: proteins, minerals, amino acids, omegas, everything is there. It is the perfect solution for people who are sceptical about eating whole insects: invisible to the eye and you can’t feel it in your mouth!

What is insect meal used for in general? Currently it is used mainly as an ingredient to enrich the nutrients in certain products, such as in our Jimini’s protein bars. It can also be found in certain snack biscuits and other crackers, or even in milkshakes!

You can even go further by using insect meal in preparations intended to replace a portion of traditional animal or vegetable protein, by making tofu or even insect steaks.

Insect meal can also be used “plain” or mixed with other flours. It can then be consumed as is, for its nutritional qualities, or incorporated into pastries, to make bread or cakes (cookies, insect shortbread, financiers, etc.).

Insect flour or insect powder?

Let’s not make a big deal of it, the very definition of the word “flour” is indeed “a powder obtained by grinding a food into small pieces”, therefore the two terms are synonyms, everyone can choose to use one or the other, for us “flour” is more meaningful in food.

What is our insect flour made of in concrete terms? At Jimini’s we make it from small mealworms called Buffalos! A small cousin of the Molitor mealworm, the Buffalo worm has great nutritional qualities: it is rich in protein, it also contains all the essential amino acids and it is a source of iron! This makes our Buffalo worm flour a good base for our sweet and savoury dishes, good for your body and good for the planet!

What are the environmental benefits of insect farming? Because yes, insects are not only good for the taste, they are also good for the planet! During breeding, insects need less space and water!

They also need less food! Finally, insects produce 99% less GHG* (Greenhouse Gas) emissions than beef farming and on average 80% of the insect is edible compared to 55% of chicken and 40% of pork or beef!

For all these reasons, at Jimini’s we are convinced that insects are one of the solutions to feed the world’s population of tomorrow! Indeed, in 2050, there will be 9 billion human beings on Earth, all with the same nutritional needs, especially in proteins!

Insect meal could therefore be one of the alternative protein solutions, easy to integrate into daily preparations!