In Paris are snails healthy?

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Michael M

YES!!!! Snails are very healthy. They have a lot of iron in them and very little calories (minus the sauce!). Don't be afraid of snails just because you do not eat them often. In Spain, they eat caracoles (small snails) all the time. The French are all about their food and would not have a risky food as a staple of their diet.

Honestly, I have never had better snails then in the Les Halles area of Paris. It was utterly amazing. Snails taste like any other mollusk, yet with a unique flavor.

All in all, TRY THEM!!!!

marzetwo

mmmmmmm ! I like them...

actually you also have to like garlic, as they are usually cooked in a garlic sauce. You don't really see that it's snails, they are black once the're cooked.

on the picture below, the green stuff is the garlic and parsil butter. The cooked snail hasbeen put back in its (washed) enveloppe.
http://www.aftouch-cuisine.com/fr/escargots-de-bourgogne-42.htm

in this phot, the black stuff are the snails :
http://www.750g.com/fiche_de_cuisine.2.123.6741.htm

I'm from Burgundy and I remember my grandmother doing snails herself once (including picking them). That involved an horrible procedure of having them sweat (with salt ? can't remember) before you can cook them, irk. Now I only get some at restaurant or at our (rather elaborate) canteen at work, and I just don't think of the above-mentionned horrible procedure, which, if you really want to know (and read french), is nevertheless described here :
http://www.saveursdumonde.net/recettes/preparation-des-escargots-vivants/

We don't eat snails everyday, mind you.

Respect others

There is nothing inherently unhealthy about eating a snail, as long as the snail was healthy. You wouldn't want to eat a snail that you just found in your garden after you put out your snail bait, for example, because you'd be eating the snail bait it ingested.

It's very important for the snail farmer or snail collector to "purge" the snails intestinal system before cooking it. This process can take up to a week or longer. You don't want to eat the unknown contents of the snails' stomach, because snails in the wild will eat decayed matter, carrion, and plants that might not be healthy for humans to eat. You can read about that here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escargot

Some French people in the country will collect the snails for days or weeks until they have lots and lots of them. They keep the live snails in boxes or cages or big jars, and feed them flour or cornmeal for days or weeks until their "poo" is just white. This cleans out their digestive tract from the dirt and leaves and plants they've been eating before they were collected.

Snails are grown commercially on farms and sold to restaurants in large quantities. The snail farmers control their diet and feed them ground cereals.

When I'm in France, I like to eat snails in the region where they are very popular, which is Burgundy. If I were in Paris, I would only order snails if I were at a restaurant that specialized in Burgundian cuisine, or if the chef were from Burgundy, because then I would know it is their specialty.

Rillifane

The snails eaten in France are not the snails you find in your fish tank but one of a few species of garden snails. Humans have been eating such snails for thousands of years.

Not all varieties snails are safe to eat but the ones served in France are.

Like everything, it is a matter of personal taste as to whether you like them or not.

billy

Yes, they are healthy, and good too. I have eaten them in Paris, they take a little getting used to because of what you think of them but they are good as anything else.

they are actually pretty good healthy don't know but they are not that bad

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