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It is not a myth. Nor a hoax. Nor a stupid French bashing article. The French really love snails. I remember eating snails since my young age, even if I don’t like it anymore.

Here are couple of links for Snail lovers, just for fun.

First, How to cook them. Here is a good recipe in English, at Escargots Passion with good tips (Check their homepage for a funny little animation) :

The first evening I wash them thoroughly with a garden spout. That activates them so they empty their intestines. The same step I do on the second and sometimes third evenings.(Note : you can give them dill (anethum) these first two or three days to give them a good flavor). If they are very dirty, it may be necessary to wash them one by one. During next three days, I leave them to dry.

Thanks to Passion Escargot, you can discover very educative websites about Escargots like La Caracole :

Discover snails of the whole World… whose largest specimen, coming from Africa, weighs approximately 300 g. Annual reproduction of 250 000 “snails”… the largest herd of Languedoc Roussillon!!! Stages of their life, nursery, their growth.

You may learn at L’escargotier that Snails are both Male AND Female, each one of them. But they still need to be 2 for reproduction purposes. And they have sex with their heads.

Or visit Jean-Pierre and Antony’s farm. They have a diploma in Escargology (heliciculture).

But China is a competitive actor on this growing market : according to Chinasnails.com ,

The United States imports $300 million worth of snails annually. 98% of these come in cans.

To conclude, here is everything you need to know about Raising Snails in the US. You may learn for example about Snail Cannibalism :

Cannibalism may increase. Sometimes, properly developing embryos might be eaten. A high density of “clutches” of egg masses increases the rate of cannibalism, as other nearby egg masses are more likely to be found and eaten. Snail egg has 12 to 20 times the protein of salad. Snail egg is an excellent starter food for newly hatched snails, but they tend to only eat eggs of their own species.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 12:26 am and is filed under Unusual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.