September 11, 2026 • 12 mins
Escargot is just one of many ways that humans enjoy eating land snails -- and we've been eating them for 30,000 years. Learn about the snails in question, how they're farmed, and why it's so hard to find them fresh in the U.S. (outside of your garden, anyway) in today's episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://recipes.howstuffworks.com/escargot.htm
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey BrainStuff, Lauren
Vogelbaum here. Depending on where and how you grew up,
you might consider land snails a lovely delicacy, a staple protein,
a foreign curiosity, a garden pest, or even a pet.
(00:24):
As a food, snails in English are often called by
the French term escargot, much the same way that we
call the meat from cattle beef. If you've never had
the chance to try escargot, you might have questions. Is
it slimy? What kind of snails count as escargot? Do
snails taste good? That last one is obviously subjective, so
(00:48):
let's start with the facts. Snails are members of the
animal class Gastropoda, which are invertebrates, including both slugs, which
don't grow shells, and snails, which do. The part of
a snail that's commonly visible outside of the shell is
the head foot, which is muscly on one end and
(01:08):
has sensory tentacles on the other. Land snails have a
mucus coat to keep their bodies from drying out. Hidden
inside the shell, snails have what's called a visceral hump,
which is the part of their body that contains most
of their vital organs. Generally, when cooking, small to mid-sized
(01:28):
snails are prepared whole, whereas larger ones have their organs
removed and maybe sliced into bite-sized pieces. You do have
to de-slime the snails if you're using them fresh by
washing them. And so, no, prepared snails are not slimy.
Land snails inhabit temperate to tropical areas around the world,
(01:50):
and although most of them are technically edible if prepared correctly,
only a handful are widely raised as food. The three
common species for French-style escargot are Cornu asparum, otherwise known
as the brown garden snail, the common European snail, or
in French, the petite gris, or little grey. Another species,
(02:12):
called Helix licorum, also known as the Turkish snail, is
sometimes sold as petite gris. Then there's Helix pomatia, also
called the Burgundy snail or Roman snail. At least a
dozen other species of land snails are commonly eaten around
the Mediterranean, west to central sub-Saharan Africa, and south to
(02:33):
southeast Asia, and beyond. Sea snails are also popular. If
you've ever had abalone or conch, congratulations, you've eaten snails.
Those are both sea snails in the same class, gastropoda,
and could be subjects of their own episodes. The classic
French dish escargot à la bourgogne involves baking snails in
(02:55):
a mixture of butter and fresh minced garlic, shallot, and parsley,
along with some salt and pepper, traditionally having cooked the
snails in a white wine broth first. They're eaten with
small forks or toothpicks out of their shells or baking
dishes and as an appetizer or small bite. Prepared this way,
they'll be smooth and tender-chewy in texture, a bit like
(03:17):
calamari or mushroom or a springy cheese curd, and with
a mild earthy or vegetal kind of flavor. Though honestly,
at that point, you're mostly getting the garlicky-herbed butter. But
like any protein, snails can be, and are, cooked and
eaten in any number of ways. Grilled or fried, boiled
in water or wine or broth, in the shell or out,
(03:40):
in sweet or spicy chili sauces, in soups or curries
or stews, over pasta or polenta or rice, or served
alone as a snack. Snail eggs, sometimes called snail caviar,
is also considered a delicacy in some places. It's hard
to find fresh snails in the United States. Most are
imported either canned or frozen, because snail farming, or holisticulture,
(04:05):
hasn't really caught on here. Part of the reason for
that is that the familiar types of snails grown elsewhere
for food can be highly invasive in non-native environments, because
they'll pretty much eat anything and can reproduce prolifically. We've
talked before on the show about how giant land snails
are invading Florida, for example. it's illegal on a federal
(04:28):
level to take a live land snail across state lines.
The first modern snail farm in the U.S. only managed
to get started in 2017 or so, and it's a
300-square-foot greenhouse that's about 28 square meters in Long Island,
New York. The company is called Peconic Escargot. They're not
(04:48):
a sponsor, they're just the only currently operating holisticulture company
in the country. They've gone to great lengths to prevent
their livestock from escaping into the surrounding countryside, because these
buddies could wreak havoc on the other local farms and vineyards. So,
they surround the snails' living containers with concentrated saltwater, which
(05:09):
should kill them, but then the greenhouse also has a
dead perimeter at 12 feet by 12 feet, kept free
of vegetation just in case. They may have 100,000 snails
there at any given time. The preferred feed for farmed
snails is grains, greens, and soil. They've got to get
a lot of minerals, including calcium, to build those shells.
(05:33):
They take about six to eight months to reach maturity.
When they're farmed or collected from the wild, they're usually
given a special non-dirt diet for their final week of
life to purge them of any soil or other stuff
that humans wouldn't want to eat that's kicking around in
their digestive tract. This is similar to how oysters are treated.
The snails are sometimes fed herbs like mint, tarragon, or
(05:56):
basil during their purge to add to their final flavor.
Part of the reason that snails have to be kept
such a lid on is because of how they reproduce.
The land snails that we eat are typically hermaphrodites, meaning
that they each have both male and female reproductive organs.
In order to reproduce, they have sex with a partner
(06:17):
in mating sequences that can last 4-12 hours. during which
each partner can inseminate and each can be inseminated. Involved
in this process, in many land species anyway, are what's
called love darts. These are spears of calcium carbonate, or chitin,
that a snail will poke out of its body and
attempt to stab its partner with, coated in a hormone
(06:39):
mucus that, if it lands correctly in its partner, will
increase its partner chances of insemination. If you're interested in
hearing more about all of that, Our compatriots over at
the podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind have a bunch
of episodes about snails and slugs that you can look up.
Really fascinating. But for our food-related purposes today, I'll say
(07:02):
that snails alone are pretty good for you to eat.
A great source of protein, low in fat, and what's
in there is the good fats, high in micronutrients like
vitamin E, magnesium, and iron. Lots of vitamins and minerals.
Snails are being investigated for more widespread use as an inexpensive,
readily available, and nutritious protein, especially in places where people
(07:26):
have a hard time affording enough protein. When farmed responsibly,
they can be way more environmentally friendly than larger animals
like pigs and cattle, and even chickens. And humans have
been taking advantage of this source of protein for tens
of thousands of years. Evidence of people eating giant land
snails dates back some 31,000 years in cave sites in
(07:49):
what's now Tanzania. And archaeologists working in the Valencia region
of Spain in the 20-teens found a plethora of smaller
snail shells in cooking pits that are almost as old,
give or take a thousand years. The people cooking them
there selected fully grown adult snails over a year old,
which shows a size preference and probably a protection of
(08:10):
the species' life cycle. and they slow-roasted them in pine
and juniper embers. Ancient Greeks and Romans liked snails. The
lower classes might have found them a convenient food source
to catch and cook, and the upper classes reportedly farmed
them using rich types of feed. Some cultures have prohibited
eating them. For example, the Jewish Torah labels mollusks in
(08:34):
general as non-kosher, and there have been times when the
Roman Catholic Church forbid them. But there were other times
when the church considered snails a good alternative to meat
during Lent, and monks kept garden snails for that purpose.
They've come in and out of fashion over the millennia.
For the article this episode is based on, HowStuffWorks spoke
(08:55):
with chef Brandon Krstowski. He said, you had aristocrats, even
kings or masters of fiefdoms, enjoying snail, and they became
a living for the peasants in working class. There's a
certain cachet that comes with people of higher stature consuming something.
In the fields or in people's homes, it was like crawfish,
(09:15):
something you eat to survive. But it was made fancy
by popular elites, and therefore it became highbrow. The European
brown garden snail was brought to the U.S. around the 1850s,
specifically to kickstart an escargot industry. They never caught on
widely as a food here, But these imports are why
(09:37):
brown garden snails are now invasive across both coasts and
much of the American southeast. We do eat our share
of snails. American restaurants serve over a billion snails every year,
mostly imported from France and Vietnam. And, as we said earlier,
mostly not fresh. Around the world, over 73,000 tons of
land snails are consumed annually. every year. France and Spain
(10:02):
consume the most. In Europe, chefs are more likely to
opt for snails sold fresh by local farms or harvesters,
though in some places, the wild populations of snails have
been majorly depleted by human development and over-harvesting. For example,
most or all of the snails enjoyed in Burgundy, France,
(10:22):
no longer come from Burgundy. More likely, they're from Hungary
or elsewhere in Europe. Snails are also very sensitive to
wider environmental issues like climate change, pollution, and the use
of some pesticides and herbicides. So maybe don't go out
and harvest snails for eating yourself unless you know what
species you're looking for, what they've been eating, and any
(10:45):
ecological concerns in your area. But if you're interested, you
can probably get them online, fresh or processed, and delivered
to you, sometimes with herbed butter. I don't think I've
ever had them fresh, and I'm very curious about the
difference now. I'm thinking about the differences between, say, fresh
and canned oysters or fresh and canned tuna. Chef Krustowski
(11:10):
adores the snail's unique flavor. He said, It's of the earth.
The way the snail consumes clovers, grains, and lives in
the garden, it takes on this terroir of the area,
so it really tastes like the earth. It has this
almost gelatinous property, like a gelatinous firm texture with a
burst of earth. Today's episode is based on the article,
(11:37):
How Escargot Evolved from Snail Snack to Treat for the Elite,
on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Stephanie Vermillion. BrainStuff is a production
of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey BrainStuff, Lauren
Vogelbaum here. Depending on where and how you grew up,
you might consider land snails a lovely delicacy, a staple protein,
a foreign curiosity, a garden pest, or even a pet.
(00:24):
As a food, snails in English are often called by
the French term escargot, much the same way that we
call the meat from cattle beef. If you've never had
the chance to try escargot, you might have questions. Is
it slimy? What kind of snails count as escargot? Do
snails taste good? That last one is obviously subjective, so
(00:48):
let's start with the facts. Snails are members of the
animal class Gastropoda, which are invertebrates, including both slugs, which
don't grow shells, and snails, which do. The part of
a snail that's commonly visible outside of the shell is
the head foot, which is muscly on one end and
(01:08):
has sensory tentacles on the other. Land snails have a
mucus coat to keep their bodies from drying out. Hidden
inside the shell, snails have what's called a visceral hump,
which is the part of their body that contains most
of their vital organs. Generally, when cooking, small to mid-sized
(01:28):
snails are prepared whole, whereas larger ones have their organs
removed and maybe sliced into bite-sized pieces. You do have
to de-slime the snails if you're using them fresh by
washing them. And so, no, prepared snails are not slimy.
Land snails inhabit temperate to tropical areas around the world,
(01:50):
and although most of them are technically edible if prepared correctly,
only a handful are widely raised as food. The three
common species for French-style escargot are Cornu asparum, otherwise known
as the brown garden snail, the common European snail, or
in French, the petite gris, or little grey. Another species,
(02:12):
called Helix licorum, also known as the Turkish snail, is
sometimes sold as petite gris. Then there's Helix pomatia, also
called the Burgundy snail or Roman snail. At least a
dozen other species of land snails are commonly eaten around
the Mediterranean, west to central sub-Saharan Africa, and south to
(02:33):
southeast Asia, and beyond. Sea snails are also popular. If
you've ever had abalone or conch, congratulations, you've eaten snails.
Those are both sea snails in the same class, gastropoda,
and could be subjects of their own episodes. The classic
French dish escargot à la bourgogne involves baking snails in
(02:55):
a mixture of butter and fresh minced garlic, shallot, and parsley,
along with some salt and pepper, traditionally having cooked the
snails in a white wine broth first. They're eaten with
small forks or toothpicks out of their shells or baking
dishes and as an appetizer or small bite. Prepared this way,
they'll be smooth and tender-chewy in texture, a bit like
(03:17):
calamari or mushroom or a springy cheese curd, and with
a mild earthy or vegetal kind of flavor. Though honestly,
at that point, you're mostly getting the garlicky-herbed butter. But
like any protein, snails can be, and are, cooked and
eaten in any number of ways. Grilled or fried, boiled
in water or wine or broth, in the shell or out,
(03:40):
in sweet or spicy chili sauces, in soups or curries
or stews, over pasta or polenta or rice, or served
alone as a snack. Snail eggs, sometimes called snail caviar,
is also considered a delicacy in some places. It's hard
to find fresh snails in the United States. Most are
imported either canned or frozen, because snail farming, or holisticulture,
(04:05):
hasn't really caught on here. Part of the reason for
that is that the familiar types of snails grown elsewhere
for food can be highly invasive in non-native environments, because
they'll pretty much eat anything and can reproduce prolifically. We've
talked before on the show about how giant land snails
are invading Florida, for example. it's illegal on a federal
(04:28):
level to take a live land snail across state lines.
The first modern snail farm in the U.S. only managed
to get started in 2017 or so, and it's a
300-square-foot greenhouse that's about 28 square meters in Long Island,
New York. The company is called Peconic Escargot. They're not
(04:48):
a sponsor, they're just the only currently operating holisticulture company
in the country. They've gone to great lengths to prevent
their livestock from escaping into the surrounding countryside, because these
buddies could wreak havoc on the other local farms and vineyards. So,
they surround the snails' living containers with concentrated saltwater, which
(05:09):
should kill them, but then the greenhouse also has a
dead perimeter at 12 feet by 12 feet, kept free
of vegetation just in case. They may have 100,000 snails
there at any given time. The preferred feed for farmed
snails is grains, greens, and soil. They've got to get
a lot of minerals, including calcium, to build those shells.
(05:33):
They take about six to eight months to reach maturity.
When they're farmed or collected from the wild, they're usually
given a special non-dirt diet for their final week of
life to purge them of any soil or other stuff
that humans wouldn't want to eat that's kicking around in
their digestive tract. This is similar to how oysters are treated.
The snails are sometimes fed herbs like mint, tarragon, or
(05:56):
basil during their purge to add to their final flavor.
Part of the reason that snails have to be kept
such a lid on is because of how they reproduce.
The land snails that we eat are typically hermaphrodites, meaning
that they each have both male and female reproductive organs.
In order to reproduce, they have sex with a partner
(06:17):
in mating sequences that can last 4-12 hours. during which
each partner can inseminate and each can be inseminated. Involved
in this process, in many land species anyway, are what's
called love darts. These are spears of calcium carbonate, or chitin,
that a snail will poke out of its body and
attempt to stab its partner with, coated in a hormone
(06:39):
mucus that, if it lands correctly in its partner, will
increase its partner chances of insemination. If you're interested in
hearing more about all of that, Our compatriots over at
the podcast Stuff to Blow Your Mind have a bunch
of episodes about snails and slugs that you can look up.
Really fascinating. But for our food-related purposes today, I'll say
(07:02):
that snails alone are pretty good for you to eat.
A great source of protein, low in fat, and what's
in there is the good fats, high in micronutrients like
vitamin E, magnesium, and iron. Lots of vitamins and minerals.
Snails are being investigated for more widespread use as an inexpensive,
readily available, and nutritious protein, especially in places where people
(07:26):
have a hard time affording enough protein. When farmed responsibly,
they can be way more environmentally friendly than larger animals
like pigs and cattle, and even chickens. And humans have
been taking advantage of this source of protein for tens
of thousands of years. Evidence of people eating giant land
snails dates back some 31,000 years in cave sites in
(07:49):
what's now Tanzania. And archaeologists working in the Valencia region
of Spain in the 20-teens found a plethora of smaller
snail shells in cooking pits that are almost as old,
give or take a thousand years. The people cooking them
there selected fully grown adult snails over a year old,
which shows a size preference and probably a protection of
(08:10):
the species' life cycle. and they slow-roasted them in pine
and juniper embers. Ancient Greeks and Romans liked snails. The
lower classes might have found them a convenient food source
to catch and cook, and the upper classes reportedly farmed
them using rich types of feed. Some cultures have prohibited
eating them. For example, the Jewish Torah labels mollusks in
(08:34):
general as non-kosher, and there have been times when the
Roman Catholic Church forbid them. But there were other times
when the church considered snails a good alternative to meat
during Lent, and monks kept garden snails for that purpose.
They've come in and out of fashion over the millennia.
For the article this episode is based on, HowStuffWorks spoke
(08:55):
with chef Brandon Krstowski. He said, you had aristocrats, even
kings or masters of fiefdoms, enjoying snail, and they became
a living for the peasants in working class. There's a
certain cachet that comes with people of higher stature consuming something.
In the fields or in people's homes, it was like crawfish,
(09:15):
something you eat to survive. But it was made fancy
by popular elites, and therefore it became highbrow. The European
brown garden snail was brought to the U.S. around the 1850s,
specifically to kickstart an escargot industry. They never caught on
widely as a food here, But these imports are why
(09:37):
brown garden snails are now invasive across both coasts and
much of the American southeast. We do eat our share
of snails. American restaurants serve over a billion snails every year,
mostly imported from France and Vietnam. And, as we said earlier,
mostly not fresh. Around the world, over 73,000 tons of
land snails are consumed annually. every year. France and Spain
(10:02):
consume the most. In Europe, chefs are more likely to
opt for snails sold fresh by local farms or harvesters,
though in some places, the wild populations of snails have
been majorly depleted by human development and over-harvesting. For example,
most or all of the snails enjoyed in Burgundy, France,
(10:22):
no longer come from Burgundy. More likely, they're from Hungary
or elsewhere in Europe. Snails are also very sensitive to
wider environmental issues like climate change, pollution, and the use
of some pesticides and herbicides. So maybe don't go out
and harvest snails for eating yourself unless you know what
species you're looking for, what they've been eating, and any
(10:45):
ecological concerns in your area. But if you're interested, you
can probably get them online, fresh or processed, and delivered
to you, sometimes with herbed butter. I don't think I've
ever had them fresh, and I'm very curious about the
difference now. I'm thinking about the differences between, say, fresh
and canned oysters or fresh and canned tuna. Chef Krustowski
(11:10):
adores the snail's unique flavor. He said, It's of the earth.
The way the snail consumes clovers, grains, and lives in
the garden, it takes on this terroir of the area,
so it really tastes like the earth. It has this
almost gelatinous property, like a gelatinous firm texture with a
burst of earth. Today's episode is based on the article,
(11:37):
How Escargot Evolved from Snail Snack to Treat for the Elite,
on HowStuffWorks.com, written by Stephanie Vermillion. BrainStuff is a production
of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and is produced
by Tyler Klang. For more shows from iHeart Podcasts, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
BrainStuff News
Host
Lauren Vogelbaum
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