This recipe comes from Nordic Food Lab in Copenhagen. 

For instructions on how to prepare bee larvae got fresh from the hive, see here.

Ceviche can refer to a lot of dishes from different cultures, but the basic idea is that instead of heat cooking the food, acid does it. So there’s always some kind of vinegar or acidic substance involved.

Photo: Nordic Food Lab, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

This recipe uses this technique on honeybee larvae - the chefs found that very precise timings were involved. When placed in the vinegar for just three minutes, the larvae’s shell got slightly firmer and their centre was creamy. More than three minutes, and they got too hard.

Here’s the recipe they used – it uses rhubarb vinegar which turns everything a rosy pink.

Ingredients:

• 15g bee larvae, frozen
• 100ml rhubarb vinegar
• 3g lemon thyme
• 5g freeze-dried lingonberries
• 5g red oxalis stems
• 5 g salt

Prepare the herbs. Pick some fresh lemon thyme leaves, about 3g. Finely chop 5g freeze-dried lingonberries and 5g red oxalis stems.

Take 15g frozen bee larvae - defrost for 3 minutes. Add them to the vinegar and season with salt. Leave three minutes (precisely!). Remove the larvae from the vinegar, and dress them with the other ingredients.  That’s it!

Photo: Nordic Food Lab, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0