Can you eat the Japanese Trap Door Pond Snails?

Question

I have saw online that you can eat wild caught garden snails, pick them and cook them but I got some snails from a lake, they are called japanese trap door snails, they are algae eaters..can I eat these snails?

Answer 1

I'm not an edible snail expert so I can't give you a definite answer but if the water in that lake has any known chemical products or waste in it then you shouldn't eat them (just like how you have to make sure that the garden snails you are eating haven't got close to any pesticides). To be honest, I would just stick to the garden snails to avoid any risk. If you do decide to eat the Japanese snails, then be sure to prepare them correctly:

Answer 2

I'm Japanese and I've had Japanese sea snails and pond snails before. When I was a kid, I used to go catch pond snails or Tanishi  with my brother and my dad a lot. Catching them was fun to do but eating them was not actually good because they tasted so muddy. So I didn't like to eat them at all. And I still don't like to eat them....but I do like sea snails because they taste a lot better. Well, if you like tilapia, you might like pond snails.

Anyway, if you want to eat them, you need to wash them pretty well. And then you need to soak them in clean water for at leat three days to get rid of sand inside the shell. After that, boil them with water for about 5 minutes or so. Use toothpicks to get the snail out of the shell and get rid of guts. Put snails through a skewer and grill them with soy sauce.

BTW, before you cook the snails, you need to check if the lake that you caught them in is not poluted or not. I don't want you to get sick, you know.