**Alexandra Dion-Poulin, Myriam Laroche, Alain Doyen and Sylvie L. Turgeon \***

Department of Food Sciences, Institute of Nutrition and Functional Foods (INAF), Université Laval, Quebec City, QC G1V 0A6, Canada; alexandra.dion-poulin.1@ulaval.ca (A.D.-P.); myriam.laroche.6@ulaval.ca (M.L.); alain.doyen@fsaa.ulaval.ca (A.D.)

**\*** Correspondence: Sylvie.Turgeon@fsaa.ulaval.ca; Tel.: +1-418-656-2131 (ext. 404970)

Academic Editors: Przemyslaw Lukasz Kowalczewski, Anubhav Pratap Singh and David Kitts

Received: 15 October 2020; Accepted: 6 November 2020; Published: 17 November 2020

**Abstract:** The low consumer acceptance to entomophagy in Western society remains the strongest barrier of this practice, despite these numerous advantages. More positively, it was demonstrated that the attractiveness of edible insects can be enhanced by the use of insect ingredients. Currently, insect ingredients are mainly used as filler agents due to their poor functional properties. Nevertheless, new research on insect ingredient functionalities is emerging to overcome these issues. Recently, high hydrostatic pressure processing has been used to improve the functional properties of proteins. The study described here evaluates the functional properties of two commercial insect meals (*Gryllodes sigillatus* and *Tenebrio molitor*) and their respective hydrolysates generated by Alcalase®, conventionally and after pressurization pretreatment of the insect meals. Regardless of the insect species and treatments, water binding capacity, foaming and gelation properties did not improve after enzymatic hydrolysis. The low emulsion properties after enzymatic hydrolysis were due to rapid instability of emulsion. The pretreatment of mealworm meal with pressurization probably induced protein denaturation and aggregation phenomena which lowered the degree of hydrolysis. As expected, enzymatic digestion (with and without pressurization) increased the solubility, reaching values close to 100%. The pretreatment of mealworm meal with pressure further improved its solubility compared to control hydrolysate, while pressurization pretreatment decreased the solubility of cricket meal. These results may be related to the impact of pressurization on protein structure and therefore to the generation of different peptide compositions and profiles. The oil binding capacity also improved after enzymatic hydrolysis, but further for pressure-treated mealworm hydrolysate. Despite the moderate effect of pretreatment by high hydrostatic pressures, insect protein hydrolysates demonstrated interesting functional properties which could potentially facilitate their use in the food industry.

**Keywords:** entomophagy; *Gryllodes sigillatus*; *Tenebrio molitor*; edible insect meals; protein hydrolysate; high hydrostatic pressures; functional properties
