Thanks to BFP reader iWatcha for this culinary recommendation…
“Did I enjoy it? Hell yes. It’s rare to find a totally new combination of flavour and texture and it was privilege to be shown how to prepare it properly. Will I be knocking up land snail at my next dinner party? I’m ashamed to say, no. I’m not sure I could find anyone to share it…”
“I’d gladly fill you in on the whole process of shell smashing, guts removal, washing with alum rocks and boiling for ages but you’d be better off watching the video above for the full, rather astonishing effect.”
Tim Hayward takes you right from buying the snails at the market (or finding them in your garden!) to de-sliming and then all the way to the table in the Guardian’s article and video: Hard as Snails
Would the folks at BFP eat them? Would you?
Watching the video, Shona said something like “Eeeeeewwww!” but Robert said (with a big smile), “That’s nothing compared with snacking on live grubs in Brazil. Wiggly fellows as big as your thumb, aren’t they!”
Barbados Free Press 
Good way for Barbados to make foreign exchange, ship ’em to UK or Nigeria
African Giant Snails contain more protein and calcium pound for pound than chicken.
But is this the same snail I have in my backyard? The variety in the video looks bigger and different.
Dear Kammie and Ian:
I’ll bring some fresh, alive, and uncooked snails stright fom my garden this weekend.
Just tell me what would be a good time.
Dirty nasty bastards , yuk!Who in their right mind wud be so damn dirty, a whole bunch of disgusting ppl in the world!
Crabs and shrimp are far worse scavengers, yet ppl pay thru the nose to have seafood?
Poor Terrible..
He would eat piece-of cow, goat, chicken
but when offered snails in the South of France
wud turn his nose up at it! LOL.
I got news for you big man.
all duppy is duppy, yuh sight?
If you eating dead animals, is all de same ting.
I eat piece of HORSE already and it tasted all right!
The sooner we get to grips with this amazing new food-source and get over our government-inculcated hatred for the African snail
the sooner we start to put them in lime en salt for an hour, and work up a nice sauce for that delicacy!
LEARN FROM THE FRENCH how to do snails
and get over the childish prejudices against eating certain animals
but NOT certain other animals.
All o we eating DUPPY
– and Rasta laughing at wunnuh! ..how wunnuh picky-picky so!
Crabs and shrimp are detritus-feeders.
This means that they feast on what is essentially the scum sediment of the ocean! ..dead bodies, whatever comes their way..
And yet we pay mucho $$$ per pound for scum-feeders? LOL!
Bajans can be some of the most scornful people!
Backyard chickens will eat ANYthing up to and including doo-doo
but we’ll eat that same chicken, even if he lil hard and need pressure-cooker.
Get real -and start eating the snails
before the snails eat YOU
I don’t know if I could prepare it but I would try it for sure. It looks like really lean meat, like conch or sea cat. Yum.
Six or 7 years ago I read a Nation article on the G.A.S. that bothered me.
Beware it said, we have a new scourge to deal with. Do not eat them, do not touch them without gloves, not even the slime they leave behind. They carry ‘rat lung disease’ a type of meningitis.
Curious, I looked up the CDC web site which advised me, ‘rat lung disease, no recorded deaths, symptoms akin to a mild flu, eating raw, uncooked snails can give you this illness.’
So who is going to eat one of these snails raw? In Africa they are prized as a superb source of low fat (3%) protein (15%) and many tribes raise them with care, feeding them well and harvesting them when they reach full growth. Many recipes and videos can be found on the net.
However I don’t think the Africans are like we Bajans. They don’t go around spilling and strewing extremely toxic bait, metaldehyde, like it was fertilizer. There are few areas of our country that haven’t seen this poison used and any snail collected for eating should be penned and purged for several weeks prior to dining on them.
I haven’t looked lately but Supercentre was selling canned escargots, read giant african snail, for $10 a tin.
Barbados is somewhere around the 60th country to be infested by these creatures since they began their voyage around the world some 100 + years ago. All of these nations have made an attempt to utilize them commercially and whether it was Samoa or Hawaii none has accomplished their goal. This snail invasion is apparently worse in the first few years of infestation. It reaches a peak and then slowly begins to descend likely due to bacteria and viruses that have altered slightly to take advantage of the food source. Note that the countries that have introduced biological controls have done so with disastrous effects.
Please, be very careful with the metaldehyde bait. Use it as it should be used, sparingly, and try to use the ferric based baits. They are much much less toxic than metaldehyde. Collecting and disposing of them is the best and surest method. Remember that every snail you collect potentially stops up to a thousand from being born during the next year.
If you are going to try to feast on these snails raise them as you would a black belly sheep, good fresh daily food in a clean environment. Experiment on yourself first and enjoy.
I have to eat one of them
Every Saturday you all gobble down some Arnold. To protect the guilty you change the name and call it souse.
Whoa…what we want and don’t want to eat is our choice. Leave it at that!
I have them in my garden in South Africa. Perhaps I should start my own snail restaurant. 😀
Conch, oyster, whelks, French snails, mussels… tried them all and when cooked properly tasted great. I’d give African snails a try. Why not start marketing them alongside Lionfish in the restaurants and get rid of two problems in one go?
You trying to covince the wrong people to eat African snails. Bajans are very, very scornful, they do not eat any and everything. I would give up meat before I eat an African snail
i very much doubt you ate land snails in Barbados , you ate conch there is a difference land snails the african ones are toxic to humans they should not be eaten