How to clean and cook frozen mussels without shell

Mussels are bivalve mollusks that live in fresh and salt waters. In cooking, mussels are recognized as a real delicacy, but in order for the dish to turn out great, it is important to clean them properly. In this article we will tell you how to clean river and sea mussels.

September 25, 2021.

Fresh shellfish must be cleaned and cooked immediately - this way they turn out tasty and healthy. Before cleaning, it is important to discard those specimens that have opened their doors and have various damages. When the flaps are slightly open, you need to press on the mussel: if it closes, it means it is suitable for cooking.

Then you need to take a deep plate, pour cold water into it and fold the mussels to clean them of sand.

You can take them out after 20 minutes and wrap them in a towel

Next, you need to perform pulling movements of the valves in the direction from the mussel. When you pull the flaps inward, there is a high probability of spoiling the mussel. Cleaned shellfish should be placed in clean water and boiled according to the classic version. After just 5 minutes, the shellfish meat will become tender; you should not overcook it, otherwise it will turn out tough.

Before cooking, the shellfish are defrosted at room temperature. To speed up this process, you need to place them in cold water and press them down with something heavy on top (this is necessary to prevent them from opening prematurely).

After defrosting, it is important to discard opened specimens. After selection, you need to place the mussels in cold water for 1 hour; this procedure allows you to clean the future delicacy from the sand that is inside the shell. Then, using a stiff brush, it is important to remove any stuck-on dirt from the shells.

After this, you need to place the mussels in hot water and boil until the valves open completely (this will take about 10 minutes).

The container should be shaken periodically while cooking mussels so that the shellfish heats evenly. Opened mussels can be safely served, but unopened mussels should be thrown away.

Now you know how to clean mussels - the video will show this more clearly. Cook shellfish correctly, then they will bring considerable benefits. Mussel meat is considered a strong antioxidant, a safe natural aphrodisiac, reduces the risk of developing cancer, improves metabolism, saturates with beneficial microelements and significantly strengthens the immune system.

Bon appetit!

Mussels are one of the most delicious and healthy seafood. But to get real pleasure from eating seafood, you need to cook the mussels correctly.

Before cooking, mussels need to be properly prepared. To do this, we clean all the garbage and sand, select and throw away all spoiled and damaged specimens. If you cook mussels without going through them, you can end up with serious poisoning.

How to clean mussels from sand and dirt

We clean and prepare this seafood delicacy on the day of purchase. If you are not going to cook them immediately upon arrival from the store, then put them in a container (plate, saucepan), cover with a damp towel and put them in the refrigerator. They should be at room temperature as little as possible. It is best to start cooking right away, since then a larger number of live mussels will remain, and only they are used for heat treatment. We throw away all mussels that are damaged, even have small shell chips or open shells. If you are in doubt whether a clam is alive or not, apply light pressure to the shell. If it is alive, it will close immediately. Soak the clams in cold water. For convenience, use a wide container. The mussels will remain in the water for a while, and you can easily separate the sand. Next you will need a slotted spoon, a towel, a brush and another bowl of cold water. Clean mussels next to the sink. The clams should lie in cold water for about twenty minutes. To avoid lifting sand from the bottom of the container, carefully remove them one at a time using a slotted spoon. It is important to separate the so-called beard from the shell - those fibers with which the mussel is attached to the stones. Grab it with a towel and pull it away from the sink. Do this perpendicular to the shell, otherwise you will damage the clam itself. Then, thoroughly rinse the sink using a brush under running water. That's it, the mussel is ready for heat treatment.

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How to properly clean frozen food?

When starting to process a frozen component, you must start by properly thawing it. To do this, iron the products into a bag, place them in a container with cold water and be sure to press down the mussels with a weight so that the shells do not open prematurely. The load should not be very heavy, otherwise the shells may crack and eating such meat will be dangerous.

The cleaning process itself looks like this:

1. For processing, we select only tightly closed shells; it is better to discard open items immediately. Place a quality product in a pan, fill it with water, add a few tablespoons of corn flour and keep it like that for an hour. Manipulation will get rid of sand that may be contained in the shells.
2. If there are tendrils on the products, remove them with pliers, pulling them towards the base of the shell. Next, we clean the shells of the mussels using a stiff brush.
3. We rinse the products again and immediately begin cooking. Cleaned mussels should not sit idle for more than a few minutes.

The classic option is to immerse the products in hot water and boil them for 8-10 minutes, until the shells are completely opened. You can add a little white wine to the broth, then the meat will be especially tender and aromatic. Only fully opened shells are served at the table, the rest are thrown away.

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How to cook mussels

Like any seafood, mussels cook very quickly. After digesting them, you will not get a delicacy, but something with the consistency of rubber. Use a frying pan for cooking. A glass of white wine or plain water will be enough to cook the shellfish. It is important that the liquid does not cover them completely. They seem to be steamed rather than boiled. To cook mussels, set the heat to medium. Five minutes will be enough for the delicacy to be completely ready. Shake the pan occasionally during cooking. Remove the mussels from the heat and select only those whose valves are slightly open. The rest will have to be thrown away.

Boiled and frozen mussels are cooked for 23 minutes after the water boils. Frozen mussels cook for 57 minutes

Boil fresh mussels in shells for 12 minutes.
In the microwave at full power, boiled frozen mussels can be cooked with a small amount of water (half a glass of water for half a kilo of mussels) for 7 minutes at a power of 800 watts. Products
Frozen mussels - 300 grams Water - 1 glass Salt - 1 teaspoon

How to cook mussels

3. Place mussels in water without defrosting; cook for 7 minutes.

1. Pour 1 cup of water into a small saucepan. 2. Salt the water. 4. Drain the water and use boiled mussels in salads and main courses.

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Interesting facts about mussels

They need an aquatic environment to live.

Not far from the coast, on breakwaters, stones, cliffs, and artificial underwater reefs, they form a powerful coastal belt.

They are firmly attached by byssal threads (this is the sponge or “beard” that we remove when processing mussels) to various substrates (solid bases).

Types of mussels:

Korean, edible, Mediterranean, Pacific, Gray.

All of them are excellent biofilters, feeding on the smallest plankton and bacteria, unicellular algae, and the remains of aquatic plants and animals.

During the day, one five- to six-centimeter individual passes through itself 70-80 liters of polluted water and returns it to the sea clean and clarified.

Mussels live in all seas of the world. Places where they are crowded together in entire colonies, often forming druses, are called mussel sea banks. Drusa - from him. Druse - “brush”; This is when mollusks occupy one base and grow together.

A sea bank is a part of the seabed where the depth is much shallower than in neighboring areas.

A mussel bank is a sea shallow where mussels settle in huge numbers. The population density of mollusks on the bank is several hundred individuals per 1 sq. meter.

Italy is washed by five seas - the Adriatic, Ionian, Mediterranean, Tyrrhenian and Ligurian. And everywhere in the shallow waters live all sorts of sea limpets, sea urchins, sea cucumbers and sea dates, small crabs, and oysters. And, of course, mussels, which are very revered on the Apennine Peninsula. Along with oysters, of course.

Here it must be said that mussels are incredibly prolific. A female edible sea mussel can spawn up to 10 million mature eggs in one spawning period.

Mussels become sexually mature at two to three years, live 8-10 years, and have two spawnings during the year. You can imagine how many shells the seabed is covered with!

There are also river, freshwater mussels that differ from sea mussels in the quality and amount of “garbage” that they carry on and in themselves.

Mussels are the oldest inhabitants of the Earth

In Crimea, archaeologists still find large piles of empty doors during excavations.

Based on these accumulations, even an entire period in the history of the peninsula was identified under the name “shell midden culture.”

How to cook mussels in gadgets

In a steamer

over steam - 10 minutes, mussels cooked this way are the healthiest.
In a slow cooker
or in an open
pressure cooker
- 5 minutes after the water boils.
in the microwave
, slightly defrosting - literally 2-3 minutes at full power without adding water.
— When cooking mussels, it is necessary to take into account that overcooked mussels
will become rubbery and tasteless. Therefore, mussels should not be cooked for too long.

— Calorie content

mussel meat - 70 kcal/100 grams.

— Price

frozen mussels -500-600 rubles/1 kilogram of boiled frozen mussels (as of May 2021).

— Mussels are boiled in small quantities

salted water - otherwise all the mussel juice will go into the broth, which in practice is used very rarely. — Mussels are not defrosted before cooking, because... their size is too small for cooking frozen mussels to spoil the product - the mussels will instantly defrost in boiling water!

— When choosing mussels

Pay attention to the weight of the mussels without the ice glaze (always indicated on the package and can be up to 1/5 of the weight of the mussel meat) and the integrity of the ice glaze. Fresh mussels of high quality do not have a strong odor, much less the smell of fish. There should be just a light, fresh smell of seafood.

— How to clean mussels?

Boiled-frozen (the most common) mussels do not need to be processed, because... they are without a shell. Sometimes mussels need to be cleaned of algae—thread-like, tough plants. If the mussels are cheap, it is better to sort the mussels and inspect them for shell fragments. Frozen and fresh shelled mussels need to be cleaned: using a brush, remove inedible algae and other contaminants from the mussels, then rinse in several waters. Cooking will help the mussels open; after opening the shells, remove the mussels and remove the remaining algae.

— If the mussels are to be fried

, then you can fry them without cooking - in oil for 5-7 minutes.

— When cooking, mussels may not open

- in this case they are removed from the edibles.

— What to cook from boiled mussels:
None 3. Make pilaf with mussels.

2. Serve with spaghetti or other pasta. 4. Make a salad or “sea cocktail” appetizer.

Mussels are relatively inexpensive but very healthy shellfish. Despite the fact that they are called “poor man’s oysters,” the dishes they make are very tasty. Today you can buy shellfish both peeled and in shells. Many people prefer the second option, since during the process of preparing shellfish in the shells, it is easy to find and discard all the stale ones. Of course, in this case you need to know how to cook mussels in shells correctly. Today, the intricacies of this technology are familiar not only to chefs of elite restaurants. Many housewives easily cope with the task at home.

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How should you handle the finished dish?

Extracting meat from a finished product is a real art, and in the absence of appropriate skills, the process of consuming the delicacy can turn into torture. If the menu includes a dish of mussels, then the table should be set with special utensils consisting of tweezers and an oyster fork.

We take the tongs in our left hand, clamp them on the shell, which remains in the plate, and use a fork to carefully remove the meat. It is poured over with sauce and eaten. Used shells are placed on a separate plate. The whole procedure is quite troublesome, but after some time it even begins to provide aesthetic pleasure. The main thing is to act carefully so as not to splash the juice on others.

Processing mussels before cooking is the key to high-quality cleaning of the product, because it is not very pleasant to feel grains of sand on your teeth rather than juicy meat. It is highly not recommended to pre-marinate the product; it will lose its traditional softness and turn into a fragrant but tasteless snack.

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Features of selection and preparation

In order for a dish of mussels in shells to be tasty, healthy and safe, you need to know the basic rules for their selection and preparation.

• When choosing fresh or frozen mussels in shells, preference should be given to large ones, since small ones will have very little valuable meat - about the size of a bean seed.
• Look carefully at mussels when purchasing. You can only take shellfish whose shells are intact and closed. Damaged shells usually occur if the product has been repeatedly frozen and defrosted. Open shells indicate that the mollusk is sick, dead, or simply very stale. If you buy fresh mussels, you can try knocking on the shell - if it closes, then everything is in order, the mussel is alive, and you can safely take it and cook it.
• If you are going to cook frozen mussels in their shells, you will need to defrost them first. It is best to let them thaw in the refrigerator. This way the shellfish will better retain their beneficial properties.
• The mussel shells must be peeled until smooth before cooking. This can be done using a dull knife, which should be used to scrape the shells well.
• Before washing, mussels can be immersed in cold water for a couple of hours. In this case, it will be easier to wash them from sand. In addition, this procedure will help to immediately get rid of dead mollusks: the living ones will sink to the bottom, and the dead ones will remain on the surface.
• Mussels in shells can be boiled, stewed, or baked in the oven. Regardless of the cooking method, it is important to select and discard any mussels whose shells have not opened after 5-7 minutes of cooking. This indicates that the product is not fresh, and it is easy to get poisoned by missing mussels.
• To improve the taste of mussels, you can boil and stew them with the addition of wine, lemon juice, tomatoes, milk, garlic sauce, dill, pepper, and celery. The choice of one or more of these ingredients depends on the recipe.
• Serve the mussels with the top part of the shell removed. You can remove the clam from the bottom of the shell using a fork. In some restaurants, when serving mussels, the table is served with tongs. They are needed in order to grab the removed part of the shell and use it to extract the shellfish meat from the remaining part.

Homemade recipes

This type of seafood is prepared in various ways: in the microwave, in a slow cooker, on the stove. They are fried, baked, boiled and pickled. Heat treatment does not exceed 3−5 minutes. To get rid of the fishy smell, you need to sprinkle the product with freshly squeezed lemon juice.

Fried Clams with Onions and Garlic

This appetizer can be served with a side dish or as a separate dish. Ingredients:

• 800 g mussels;
• 2 onions;
• 70 g butter;
• several cloves of garlic;
• black pepper and salt to taste.

Heat a saucepan, add butter, then add seafood. Then add chopped onion and mix thoroughly. When this mixture is fried, you need to pepper it, add salt and add grated garlic. All this needs to be mixed well, then removed from the heat, cover with a lid and leave for 3 minutes.

How to cook boiled mussels in shells

Compound:

• mussels in shells – 2 kg;
• water – 1 l;
• lemon – 1 pc.;
• salt – 20 g;
• ground black pepper - to taste.

Cooking method:

• Immerse the mussels in cool water for half an hour, remove, brush on all sides with a brush, scrape with a knife and rinse in running water.
• Wash the lemon, cut it in half, squeeze the juice out of it. Remove any seeds that have gotten into the juice. Pour the juice into a thick-walled saucepan.
• Pour a liter of cold water into the pan, add salt and pepper, stir.
• Place clean mussels in their shells into the pan. Place the pan over medium heat, covering it with a lid.
• When the water boils, wait 5 minutes and check the mussels. Remove the shellfish whose shells have already opened from the pan.
• Check the readiness of the mussels again after 2-3 minutes. Remove the opened ones from the pan, discard the unopened ones.

Serve boiled mussels immediately after cooking. Apart from white wine, beer will be a good choice for drinks. You can cook mussels in water mixed with dry white wine.

The optimal ratio of these components is 1:1. The taste of the finished mussels in this case will be completely different, more delicate and refined.

There is no need to ensure that the liquid completely covers the shellfish during cooking. Mussel shells open when exposed to steam. You can cook any mussels according to the given recipe: frozen or fresh.

They can be eaten immediately, but other dishes are often prepared using them. Including salads.

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Fresh mussels baked in shells

Compound:

• fresh mussels in shells – 1 kg;
• fresh tomatoes – 0.3 kg;
• stale bread – 40 g;
• olive oil – 20 ml;
• garlic – 2 cloves;
• parsley - 1 sprig;
• cloves – 1 pc.;
• salt, pepper - to taste;
• water – 0.5 l.

Cooking method:

• Pour water into the pan. Place the peeled and washed mussels in their shells into it.
• Place the pan over high heat. Wait for the shells to open. Remove the tops by removing the mussels from the pan and letting them cool slightly.
• Crush the garlic.
• Pour boiling water over the tomatoes and remove the skins. Grate the tomato pulp, chop with a blender or rub through a sieve. Mix with garlic.
• Grind salt, pepper and cloves in a mortar.
• Grate stale bread and add to tomato puree.
• Put the spicy mixture there.
• Add olive oil, stir.
• Place the mussels, shell side down, on a baking sheet lined with parchment. Place tomato mixture on top of each mussel.
• Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and place a baking sheet in it.