Mussels Steamed with Leeks and Mustard

Ann and I love mussels. They make a wonderful and easy-to-cook meal that never fails to satisfy us. I picked up about three pounds, a generous meal for two, a couple weeks back. We had them the night we got back from our coast run to Cannon Beach, a night on which I did not feel like cooking anything intricate after driving for four hours or so.

Mussels Steamed with Leeks and Mustard

Scrubbed and Debearded Blue Mussels

The mussels that I bought are wild blue mussels from Washington State. The woman at the seafood shop told me the area from which they came, but I promptly forgot. I have served thousands of pounds of mussels in my life, half farmed and half wild. While some people swear by one or the other, I don't know that there is that much difference between the two, all other things being equal.

I do know that at the restaurant, I switched from rope-grown Prince Edward Island (PEI) mussels to wild Cape Cods one winter when the Canadian farms were iced in, this on top of decreasing size and increasing price of the PEIs. I found that the larger wild mussels from Cape Cod were a lot tastier than the smaller PEIs and three or four dollars a bag cheaper.

A downside to wild mussels is that they are generally dirtier and have more beard than farmed mussels, increasing the labor needed to clean them. This particular batch of mussels was the hardest to clean that I have ever experienced.

Cleaning Mussels

Here is what you need to know to store and clean mussels:

Mussels are alive and they need oxygen to remain alive. You should never eat a dead mussel. To store mussels, put a layer of ice in a container and put the mussels uncovered on top of the ice. I put the ice in a plastic bag to keep the mussels from being submerged in all that fresh water. Drape a wet towel over the mussels and keep it wet.

You can store mussels as long as they remain alive. You will lose a fraction of the mussels each day until they are all dead and the longer you store them, the more that die each day, so plan to use them quickly. At the restaurant, mussels were delivered three days a week.

A dead mussel will not close, so the first thing I do is to dump the mussels in a big bowl of fresh water. The live mussels will automatically close. In fact, any mussel that is floating, you know is alive. It's the ones on the bottom of the bowl that you must investigate.

I use a kitchen towel (fortunately, they're cheap!) to clean mussels, starting with the floaters. Wipe any mud, grit, and other detritus off the shell.

Next comes removing the beard, if any. Farmed mussels will often be clean enough to cook without further cleaning, but wild mussels are generally going to have formidable beards, the fibers that they use to anchor themselves to rocks, pilings, and so forth. Using the towel for grip, grasp the beard firmly and pull the beard down towards the hinge end.

Look at the very bottom photo in this post if you are confused about which end I mean. If you imagine that an open mussel is a butterfly with rounded wings at the top and a narrow body at the bottom, you want to pull the beard towards the narrow end (on the right in the photo).

Once you get to the mussels that are not floating, if they are closed tight, they're OK. If they are open or partially open, pull them out and tap them on the counter. If they are alive, they will close in response to being tapped. Discard any that do not close.

After cooking, do not serve any mussel that has not opened.

Leeks, Dijon-style Mustard, White Wine

After cleaning my batch of mussels, I wanted to cook them very simply. The first thing I saw in the refrigerator was a leek, so I grabbed it, a bottle of dry white wine, and a jar of Dijon-style mustard. In the pan in which I was going to steam the mussels, I sautéed the cleaned leek in a touch of canola oil until translucent, then stirred in a couple of big spoonsful of mustard. Then I splashed the pot with a scant half a cup of white wine and stirred everything well.

You do not need to add much wine at all. The mussels are full of juices that will add to the wine and create a lot of broth, that delicious nectar that is the whole reason for steaming mussels. Sure, the mussels are fabulous, but the broth is incredible and the best part of the meal, especially with some good crusty bread.

We worked so hard to make exquisite broth at the restaurant and it pained me to no end when diners would return their bowls to the kitchen full of broth. Don't be like them. Don't make your chef mad. The broth is the best part, especially if the cook slipped in a tablespoon of butter before plating!

Mussels Ready to Steam

Cover the Mussels

Once you put the mussels in the pan, cover it to steam the mussels. Mussels vary in cooking time: the larger they are, the longer they take, but even so, they cook quickly. Check every minute or two until the mussels are open. When the bulk of the mussels are open, discard any that failed to open; they're probably dead.

Notice my ghetto lid on the mussels. We always cooked individual orders of mussels in a standard skillet with another inverted over it for a domed lid. I don't know too many restaurants that purchase lids for their pans. There's always aluminum foil, a sheet tray, or another pan that will make an impromptu lid. If I recall correctly, I owned two stock pot lids for about 15 stockpots and perhaps 50 skillets.

This is a long way of saying that when buying pans, you should not spring for the matching lids. Moreover, you should never buy pans in sets: they're going to sell you stuff you absolutely do not need, like bunches of lids that will collect dust somewhere.

Et Voilà! A Perfect Steamed Mussel

These mussels with a leek, some mustard, and a splash of white wine made a tremendous dinner. Despite being the filthiest mussels I have ever encountered, they were among the very best in flavor that I have ever eaten. Good on you Washington State!