How to Make Tuscan Style Mussels

get on our way. So I was at the Whole Foods the other day, and they had some beautiful Prince Edward Island, or PEI, mussels at the store, and they weren't a bad price, so I bought a bag of them. And when you buy mussels at the store, lots of times they'll come in these little bitty mesh bags, and this was just about maybe 2 pounds of mussels, which is plenty for dinner. We're gonna have it with a nice salad and some bread and some cheese. So it'll be a light dinner but a very filling dinner. Oh good, you got the right camera. Great. So what I did first was I rinsed the mussels really well. Whenever you use shellfish like mussels or clams, anything like that, you want to go through them really well and you want to make sure that you have no broken ones or none open. And if they're open and you tap them and they don't close back up like this guy, it's dead. And you do not want to eat dead mussels. And this one's broken, so I'm going to put that aside too. Most of the time when you tap them, they'll close like this guy tapped right up. So it's broken too. And sometimes you'll actually break them when you're washing them and cleaning them, so you just want to be a little careful with them.

Yep.

Okay, he's closing up. And they will open up to get air. You can rinse them in water, however you want to do it. So let me put these back in the sink. But you want to make sure they're clean. These are really clean mussels to begin with. A lot of times they have beards, they'll call them, and that means there's this— all this stuff hanging out of them. You want to try and get as much of that off as you can. All right, so first we're going to do is we're going to chop some garlic. I'm just going to take the ends of these off. And then you don't have to mash them. I'm just going to cut them. I keep the tip of my knife down, keep my fingers on the garlic, and just slice it up. Now they don't have to be super fine because it's going to cook in there and you can pick them out. But this way we have some garlic. So that's my garlic. All right, let's go back over Oh, let's cut up some basil too while we're here. And here I have some beautiful fresh basil, nice leaves. And when I chop these up, I'm going to try and get rid of as much of the stem as I can. And then I'm going to roll them up into like a little bit of a basil cigarette, and then I'm going to chop. And this is called a chiffonade. So if anyone ever told you to chiffonade the basil, this is what they meant. Okay, I'm gonna just cross chop it a little bit because I want it to really get in there. That's good. Okay, and this is all we need to make our mussels. Some garlic, some basil, some crushed red pepper, And I'm going to make these Tuscan style. And for me, Tuscan style means I'm adding some cannellini beans. Very simple. This is not a deal breaker. You can leave them out. But if you want to have a little more flavor in them, add some cannellini beans. They're wonderful. They make a very nice sauce. Let's move this back over. And I'm going to turn this on. I've got some garlic in there. And hit it with some oil. I'm going to let it heat up. So this is olive oil, and I, I keep my olive oil in a squeeze bottle because it's easy to control how much you put in the pan. You can always add a little bit more in with the squeeze bottle. If you pour it in and your hand moves, you might pour too much in. So it's a great idea. Anybody wants to join, come on in with me too. There's seats open. Feel free to join in.

All right.

So, oh, well, this would heat a whole lot better if it was plugged in. There we go. I'm thinking my induction cooker works so well and it's not turning on. Hey, Renee.

Hey, how's it going?

Good. Long time no see.

Long time. Yeah, I know, right? All right. I'll take care of the comments.

Okay, great. Thank you. All right, excellent. So anyway, I have my induction cooker on finally, and the induction cooker is really a cool thing to have if you do any kind of entertaining besides just doing demonstration cooking like this, because you can put this just about anywhere. You can find them on Amazon anywhere from $80 to $120, and it just sits right on your countertop, or it can sit anywhere you have a 120-volt plug. You don't need— or 110-volt plug. You don't even need 240 for it. And they're relatively inexpensive. The only downside is you need magnetic pans. So you need to have a tri-ply stainless steel pan that— and they told me to carry a magnet around when I went to the stores, or cast iron. Oh, okay.

I've got cast iron. Yep.

So either one will work. Otherwise, it does not cause it to heat because as soon as I take it off, it turns itself off.

Uh-huh.

And it really only gets hot because the pan gets hot. Like, if it wasn't that the pan was heating and conducting the heat back down to the top, I could put my hand on the top because the top doesn't really get hot. It's just where the pan sits. So it's kind of ingenious the way they come up with this. But all I'm doing is I'm letting the garlic cook a little bit to get some, some of its essence going rather than it being raw when I hit the mussels with. So from that point on, all I'm going to do is I'm going to add in a little bit of crushed red pepper, and I'm going to add in some cannellini beans, about a half a can, and then I'm going to put my mussels in. Some basil, lovely basil that I cooked up or chopped up, and a little bit of white wine, which is not a deal breaker. It doesn't have to be in it. I'm going to add it in, about an ounce or two, and then it's going to get a lid., and I'm just going to leave it alone. That's how simple making clams or mussels is. What you want to do is you want to let them steam, and they'll pretty much be done when you see them start to open. Mussels seem to take a little bit longer than clams, so we want to leave them in there once they open for just a little bit longer. But that's, that's going to be dinner tonight, and it's simple. It's something you can find at most grocery stores nowadays. Mussels have always been farmed. It's something that we're used to seeing. Prince Edward Island mussels are the best mussels you can find. Most of the time you won't find them in the store, but you'll find mussels that are pretty good at most local grocery stores. It is an easy item for them to farm and to grow. They're farming clams now too. As long as they're farmed in the US, It's good. It's safe. As a rule, I don't eat a lot of farm seafood, but mussels and clams are the exceptions that I make on it. So— are you there? I can't hear you.

Oh, did you see Bren's question? I'm in the— uh, tips on—

Well, Bren, when I lived in New Jersey, I used to shop at Wegmans all the time. I don't know if you have, and even Acme's had them. You just had to, you know, when you get them, you're in Ohio. Well, I'm sure, you know, I don't know what stores are out that way, but I would look at Whole Foods. I got these at Whole Foods and they weren't that expensive. The bag of mussels was, I think, $8.50. So I mean, that's dinner for 2 of us and a salad. We got mussels out, one order would probably be $10 or $12. So we're just going to eat these plain with bread, but you could easily serve these over pasta.. But your mussels, like any seafood, shouldn't smell. Okay, yeah, Costco has them too. You have to look because a lot of times you see Costco will have clams, mussels, and all the sort. You just want to look at them. And one thing to remember when you do buy them is they need to breathe. So if you've got a drive or you put them in your refrigerator, don't stick them— you know, you put them in those plastic bags because they don't leak. They don't drip all over everything, but you want to leave that plastic bag open so air can get into it so they can breathe because they're alive. And if you close it up, they're going to die. You don't want to suffocate them, you're going to fry them. So you want to keep their method of death consistent. So yeah, you can use frozen ones. Lots of times you can just get the mussel meat too. And you can get some really nice pulled New Zealand mussels. And either way works. It's just remembering then they're cooked so they don't take as long to prepare. But the same basic method, a little olive oil, garlic, everything in here because you're steaming them and these are basically steaming to open. You can see how they're kind of almost done right now and they take very little time. I like to tell people, if you're going to have these over pasta and they're delicious over pasta, Put your pasta on, and just as you put the pasta in the water, start steaming your mussels or your clams. And it'll— they'll be done as soon as your pasta is done. Now we're just going to have, like I said, bread and salad and some cheese with this. And you could also make these red. So if you like red rather than white, if you have a favorite spaghetti sauce, even if you don't make your own, you could put a cup or two of your favorite spaghetti sauce into the mussels and make them red. You can season them up a little bit more. You can make them a little spicier if you like, if you like a little more bite to them. So, you know, it's all a matter of what you like to eat. And these are just about done. Let me get a spoon. Stir everything in, and it's making all of its own juices. And they are— and you can tell they're done. They're kind of turning nice and plump and white. Okay, so you just want to give them enough time so that they're cooked. You don't want to let them overcook, but that's basically it. We're done. So induction cooker off. You saw how fast that was. So talk about a restaurant-style meal in your house. In 15 minutes, okay, simply by buying either a bag of mussels or a bag of clams at the store. And whole thing is too, is remember to rinse them real good, to clean them up, to pick out anything that's open or cracked, because you don't want to eat dead shellfish in clams or mussels, okay? You want them to be alive when you cook, because that's how you get sick. And that's it. So we're done there. Let me just move this over, turn this off. We're going to serve them up. All that lovely broth coming out, that's going to be good for dipping bread. And that is just perfection. Okay, the smell is wonderful. You can smell the garlic coming up out of them. You can see the little beans. And if you're not a bean eater, again, like I said, leave them out. It's not a deal breaker. You could put some broccoli rabe in here or some spinach or some other greens. You could make it as different as you want to, or you can make it as plain as you want to. Very simple. So that's dinner. So we have that. And we have some gorgonzola cheese. Oops, this way. I have a dolce, which a little rat already got into, and piccante. So the dolce is a little softer and is really good on bread. It almost spreads like butter and is not as sharp. And the piccante is a little sharper but also wonderful and great on salads or just eat with bread., and then I have a nice mixed salad, and I have tomatoes, carrots, peppers, olives, celery, cucumbers, uh, I think that's it in here. So it's, it's just kind of a light mixed salad. So that'll be dinner tonight, and you're done. A little glass of wine or a loaf of some bread with it, and you've got a really nice light dinner that's better than anything you could get Takeout. That's it. So that's it for today. Now we're going to go sit down and eat. So thank you for joining and watch the replay and be right over. And I will see you on Wednesday when we're around the kitchen table for the rest of our shows. I might, I might come back tomorrow too. I've got my camera set up, so you never know. I might make something tomorrow. So I'll see you all later. Thanks for stopping in, Renee.

Good night, chef.

Good night.

Okay.