Ant egg soup

Look at them ants

This was a really tasty home cooked meal. Seriously. Gaeng pak waan sai kai mod daeng [แกงผักหวานใส่ไข่มดแดง], or in English, a vegetable soup with red ant eggs. Ant eggs are used in a couple of Isaan dishes, but they are seasonal. Another common way to serve them is in an omelet. You can click on the photos for some closeup views of the ant eggs, but it’s interesting to note how developed some of them are. You can actually make out the ant form.

As for the taste, it’s quite good. The ant eggs have a pleasant, but not very strong taste and sort of burst in your mouth, just like caviar. If you’re a sushi fan, you’ll know just what I mean. The soup is a basic soup with the local vegetable pak waan, (Melientha suavis) which literally means sweet vegetable although the vegetable is by no means sweet.

I really enjoyed this, especially since it was homemade. You can occasionally order these out at restaurants in Bangkok such as Vientiane House (not recommended) and Crok Mai Thai Lao (recommended, but you need a Thai speaker), but you’ll be lucky to have a handful of ant eggs in it. Our homemade soup was just loaded with them. Lovely!

If your curious where the ant eggs come from you can look here.

Cooking up some ant egg soup

A tasty bowl

Just a baby