White Wine Mussels

As a vegetarian that only eats seafood for her "meat" based protein, I love it! Over the years I have come to love Mussels. A lot of people have an adversion to them, but like almost everyone I know, if you try them you will most likely like them. They are great as a appetizer or if it's just one or two people, serve them with a crusty piece of bread for soaking up all the extra broth like I did for this recipe.

I used white wine to make the broth. You can use almost any white wine you like, however my only two suggestions when choosing a wine to cook with (and this goes for any recipe, just not this one) is to pick a wine that is not too sweet and one that you would be happy drinking. This will make all the difference in your recipe.

Ingredients

1lb. Mussels
1 Tbsp. Olive Oil
2-3 garlic cloves minced
1/2 bottle of white wine
Large piece of french bread

First, a few things I have learned about mussels over the past few years. The first thing is the MOST important and could save you a trip to the emergency room. When you get your mussels home clean them with a scrub pad in cold water. If you see any mussels with broken shells or that are not fully closed discard them immediately. They are dead and eating them will make you very, very sick. If you get your mussels from a good grocery store (make sure they have a clean seafood counter) or seafood shop you should not have any dead ones in the mix. You will have one or two per pound at the most.

Second, once your mussels have been cleaned and the beards (the seaweed or hairy looking things near the hinge of the mussel) have been removed (most come debearded, but it's always good to double check) add about a quarter of a cup of flour to a large bowl of ice water and soak the mussels in the mixture for an hour or two. This will remove any grit still remaining in the mussels.

Now you are ready to cook them and enjoy!

Heat the oil in a pan (or pot) over medium heat with a tight fitting lid. Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add the mussels and  then pour the wine over the mussels. Cover with the lid and cook until the mussels open.

Discard any mussels that did not fully open as they are dead and you can get very ill from eating them.

Serve the mussels and the broth in a bowl with the bread to soak up any extra broth. YUM!!!

Hint: Serve the rest of the wine with the mussels. Hey the bottle is open anyway so why not?!