Maggots

All I ever do is boil them, thoroughly. Sometimes I get a little white foam on the top of the boiling water, This stuff has an interesting odor. If you want to taste it, it's good to have a cold. Either way, the flavor of the foam isn't bad though I prefer to skim it off. The dogs love it! Usually the maggots I collect are from range cattle who've died over the winter. In addition to the maggots I often find the carcass's contain good material for other uses. The stiff skin can be softened and used, there are the tendons, hooves and even some aged beef (occasionally).

Reminds me of something the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen wrote about his stay with the Netsilik Inuit:

Right alongside the spot where we pitched our camp we found an old cache of caribou meat - two years old I was told. We cleared the stones away and fed the dogs, for it is law in this country that as soon as a cache is more than a winter and a summer old, it falls to the one who has use for it. The meat was green with age, and when we made a cut in it , it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish. I criticised their taste, but they laughed at me and said, not illogically:

You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.

I guess if you think of it that way, then they are just processed meat. Sort of like tiny, wriggling hot dogs. Maybe thats what he means by eating them with 'relish'.

Tim Rast

The Inuit people once considered live maggots (fat and protein) a delicacy in their diet, and as a goodwill gesture always offered their guests the first morsels.

Offered by Jan.