Last weekend my wife asked me to make mussels. I think I hadn’t made them since culinary school years ago so I thought that sounded like an easy and interesting idea. I decided to make them as an appetizer while we watched some college football and I made a roasted chicken that I allowed to sit until it hit room temperature for dinner…super easy and pretty much a low key meal. I made some crusty whole wheat and rye bread to go along with the mussels and cut some raw vegetables to go with the chicken. That sounds like a lot and let me just say that it definitely was! We didn’t make it to the chicken so we had it leftover on salads later.

At any rate, the mussels ended up being the star of the show. I went to Barth’s market and bought some…which they sell in packs that weigh somewhere around two pounds. I didn’t really know how many pounds to buy so I googled it and the suggested serving size is around one pound per person so that was perfect. As it also turns out, one pound per person is a very healthy serving so if you are going to make mussels as part of a multi-course meal, you can definitely scale that back. To my surprise, the mussels were quite reasonable as well, around $2.99 per pound. We may be enjoying mussels more often…

We had some white wine open so I used it to steam the mussels. First though, I sweated a bit of pancetta to render out some fat, then cooked a bit of shallot in that. From there, you add the mussels and a splash of wine or some other liquid and a few minutes later they are completely finished. Once I got to the actual cooking the whole production took less than ten minutes to complete.

A quick note before we get to the recipe…mussels are sold while alive and spoil relatively easily so I suggest purchasing them on the day you actually use them. I stored mine in the mesh bag they came in and simply placed the bag on a bed of ice and left them in the refrigerator until I was ready to begin. To prepare them, you have to do just a couple of things. Prior to cooking, you need to go through each and every mussel to inspect them, looking for two things. First, you look to make sure they are completely closed. If they are not, squeeze them and if they stay shut after the squeeze then it’s safe to continue. If it stays open, it needs to be discarded. After that, you look for a stringy thing slightly hanging out of the shell, which is called a beard. If you see it or feel it on the shell, pull it out. Once you do those two things the mussels are ready to roll…pretty easy and it goes a lot more quickly than it perhaps sounds.  Recipe follows after the jump. Continue reading →