Leek and Dill Mussels

Ann and I love mussels. Living in Central Oregon in the desert affords us no real opportunities for access to mussels, however. I took it upon myself to special order a bag of mussels at the store in hopes of surprising Ann.

The store notified me when they arrived and I hurried to get a 5-kilo (11-pound) sack of mussels from Puget Sound west of Tacoma. Sadly, I got no price break on the full bag and ended up paying a small fortune for them.

The mussels ended up being European mussels, no doubt farm-raised, very thin shelled and quite fragile, with extensive beards but otherwise clean, unevenly sized, almost all alive, and with tiny meats. I was disappointed and would not buy them again. Ann was happy just to have mussels and was less disappointed than I.

My disappointment comes from my experience with East Coast mussels. At my restaurant I started off serving farmed PEIs but their erratic quality and supply chain issues convinced me to switch to wild Cape Cod blues, the best mussels I've ever eaten. These Cape blues are now the gold standard by which I judge all mussels and these Puget Sound mussels sucked in comparison.

Quality issues aside, the following discussion about cleaning and preparation applies to mussels from any source. The goal is to clean the mussels of any foreign matter, to remove the so-called beards with which they attach themselves to surfaces, and to discard any broken or dead mussels.

Step One: Cover the Mussels in Water

The first thing that I do is to cover the mussels in fresh water. This will cause any live mussels to close their shells. Any mussel that floats is alive; in closing, they can trap enough air to float. You know that these mussels are good and you can start cleaning them.

Mussel with Beard

I've cleaned hundreds of thousands of mussels in my life and I believe that the best thing to use is a dishtowel, as unpopular as that may be at your house. [Hence why I buy bundles of bar mops from a restaurant supply house and discard them once I mess them up too badly.] Use the towel to get a grip on the slippery beard and pull it down towards the hinge, the pointy end of the mussel that is closest to the camera in the photo above. With a little tug, it should pull right out. Then using the towel, wipe any dirt off the mussel.

As you work your way through the mussels, you will run out of floaters. Just because mussels have sunk to the bottom of the bowl does not mean that they are bad or even dead. It may mean that they remained fully closed without any trapped air inside their shells or it may mean that they were a little slow to close on contact with the water and filled with water.

As you consider a mussel, if its shell is broken, discard it. If it is closed tightly, wiggle the shells a bit between your fingers to see if you can move the two shells apart. Sometimes the closed shells are full of mud and no mussel; these shells will separate fairly easily.

If a mussel is slightly open, you need to determine if it is alive. Give the two shells a gentle squeeze together. If the mussel is alive, this will trigger it to close. If it does not respond to this stimulus, throw it out.

Once the mussels are cleaned, they are ready for the pot. Cook them in a covered pot (or as we did at the restaurant, using two skillets, one inverted over the other as a makeshift lid). I generally start by sautéing a bit of onion, garlic, leek, or shallot in olive oil or butter.

Once that starts to smell good, I add the mussels to the pan making sure to leave head room for them to open their shells. Then I splash the wine with a small amount of cooking liquid, generally white wine. I have used and you could use just about any liquid including tomato juice, red wine, beer, broth, coconut milk, and so forth depending on how you want to sauce the mussels. You only need a little liquid because when the mussels open, they will release plenty of their own liquid.

Mussels Steaming in Sautéed Leeks and White Wine

In very short order, the mussels will open and the meats will go from translucent to solid color. At this point, I remove them to a service bowl discarding any mussels that failed to open.

At this point, I finish the sauce to pour over or enjoy on the side with the mussels. In this case, I added fresh dill to the mussel broth and whisked in some cold butter to lightly thicken the sauce. You really want to be careful with mussel broth not to reduce it no matter how great the temptation. Mussel liquid is highly briny and often tastes lightly of iodine, both flavors of the sea.

I once, as a young chef, had the bright idea to highly reduce the mussel liquid and use the resulting sauce to nap the cooked mussels, two mussel meats put into one half shell. Nice idea. But after a long time gently bringing the sauce to napping consistency, I tasted it to correct the seasoning. And I immediately spit the over salty, iodine-tasting mess in the trash. Don't be like young Ed. Learn from his lesson.

Butter and Dill for Finishing the Mussel Sauce

Steamed Mussels, Leek and Dill Broth on the Side

For me, the primary reason for cooking mussels is the resulting tasty broth. Sometimes I serve mussels in a bowl of broth; sometimes I put the broth on the side for dipping the mussel meats in. One of the joys of mussels is drinking all that great broth after you have eaten the mussels, or more hedonistically, using lots of great bread to sop up the broth. It irked me to no end to have customers at the restaurant not eat the broth after I spent all that time and effort in making it.

Leek and Mussel Soup

I'd never throw away any mussel broth and we had a lot left over after eating the mussel meats. The following evening, I put it in a soup pan, added a couple more leeks, and a splash of half and half. When the leeks were tender, I blended it to ultra-smooth and served it, still frothy from the blender, in coffee cups accompanied by slices of quesadilla for dipping.

Bottom line, I was terribly disappointed in the quality of these spendy mussels, but the two dinners from them made me very happy.