Mussels

[PossiblyPFB]

Fairly trivial but....

We love Mussels and chips (specifically Moules marienère style) in our house and I find them a great dinner party option as an easy but impressive main dish for a crowd, with skinny chips, salad, and French bread to sop up the sauce.

I always check whether anyone has any dietary requirements or particular dislikes to avoid before hosting. Now I find myself having to ask, and so, what’s your view on molluscs, as some people who ‘are easy’ will say actually, yeah, no mussels thanks when I double check.

It’s become apparent to me that mussels (in general, not mine- which are delicious!) .....are very marmite.

So I’m interested in the MN vote......

Mussels are amazing (YANBU)
Mussels are the worst (YABU)
If they are the worst- WHY??? Help me understand!

Thank you in advance!

but I would rather serve something that is more rustic and sociable and accessible rather than something that screams trying to impress people

But the op said

an easy but impressive main dish

I really liked them and would actively choose them in restaurants until a couple of years ago when I got terrible food poisoning from them. Still can't bring myself to have them now. Also remember people asking what had made me I'll and when I mentioned mussels the general reaction was: "ohhh that explains it - what were you expecting?" Ouch

Peasant food are we in 1750?

Wikepedia:
Peasant foods are dishes specific to a particular culture, made from accessible and inexpensive ingredients, and usually prepared and seasoned to make them more palatable. They often form a significant part of the diets of people who live in poverty, or have a lower income compared to the average for their society or country.

I love them! There are no shellfish I don’t love and have luckily ever had a reaction.

I hate snails though. No matter how much garlic they are covered in, to me they only ever taste of mud.

I wouldn’t have them as dinner party food simply because they’re so messy: if I go out to dinner I don’t want to be prising shells open with my fingers, scooping up sauce with bread and getting garlic under my fingernails. Same as in a restaurant, really. For a casual weekend lunch at home, they’re great (and cheap: for the poster who said their fishmonger charges £6 a kilo for mussels and her family eat a kilo each - that sounds excellent value when most white fish at any decent fishmonger I go to is £20 a kilo, with a kilo being four portions once cooked.)

@bigpinkflower
I get that I said impressive in my OP. Let me expand on that.

What I haven’t conveyed is that when I’ve served mussels previously there is an impressive moment when I am able to set out the huge quantity required for a party of 12 around my table in a single giant ‘famous brand’ cast iron cauldron that I can barely lift to the table. It’s too large to be called a pot- frankly.... it’s a cauldron.

It makes for an impressive moment serving everyone out of it, actually.

But seriously- the price of the raw materials never occurred to me; for me, it’s the quality of what is delivered, which is top notch. Bonus points for being out of a big ass posh cauldron.

@PossiblyPFB you don't have to justify yourself. Some of best things I've eaten have been what could apparently be termed 'peasant food'. We're on the coast a lot and whilst the fish isn't expensive it's delicious as it's so fresh.

@eyemask

❤️

I'm not in the marmite camp. I'd eat them if you put them in front of me (and I do class myself as "easy" when it comes to food, and would eat absolutely anything that someone kindly cooked for me, which applied even in my vegetarian days) but I'd never order them in a restaurant, and think, along with snails, that they're massively overrated.

Yum. Although I live in Cornwall and earring mussels is as normal as eating fish and chips for us so wouldn't be that impressed for a dinner party mind. Bouillabaisse though or a Spanish style fish stew... Deeeeelish.

As I'm currently living in land-locked Brum with no easy access to the Fish Market, I get my mussels fix at Morries - vacuum packed mussels in white wine, decanted into my 'special' French moules pot, with crusty bread = Food of the Gods. Well, Neptune, anyway
Oysters, reluctantly, I've become allergic to, over the years. They go down a treat but approx 4 hours later? Death would be a welcome release

I used to absolutely love them. Unfortunately they did not seem to agree with me and I was very sick considerably more than 50% of the times I ate them, including times when other people had them too and were fine.

As a result I now avoid them, as the poorliness they have caused has totally out me off. Not worth the risk for me unfortunately.

They're not kosher

I adore mussels. Our local pub now does a mini pot of mussels as a starter/light lunch. Too tempting...could go in there daily!

I love everything you have described and would be very happy to have that for dinner.

If you're sick off mussels you're hanging out your arse.

Mussels and some other shellfish are about the only things I wouldn't eat if you put them in front of me . There's not much I don't like, but if I was at a dinner party, I would eat whatever I was presented with. Unless it was mussels.

I'd have to be literally starving before I voluntarily are them.

I love them! But I love all seafood generally and live by the sea. But I would never feel confident dishing them up at a dinner party unless I KNEW the guests love them. Wouldn’t risk it otherwise. But in my experience most people are weird about any kind of seafood.

Love them, brought up on them as have my children since they could first eat. A hit in this house.
My offering!

@HerewardTheWoke
My husband is a bad jew!

Love ‘em!

Please invite me to your next dinner party.

Although......I do find them a messy food (because I eat them like a peasant and use one shell to remove a mussel from the next shell) and finger bowls are never big enough for me to feel as though my hands are properly washed. So for that reason, not something I would associate with a formal dinner party. But then I don’t get invited to many state dinners so what do I know?

YANBU

DH is mildly allergic to mussels- they make him vomit 3 or 4 hours after eating them (so consistently that it's not just a bad mussel) but as they are so rarely eaten in the UK he wouldn't remember to tell you he can't eat them.

I like mussels when done nicely, but sometimes they are sandy wand chewy. You don't know until you eat them though!

People are getting more and more limited in their diets, it seems to me.

When I was growing up (1970’s-1980’s) we were the ‘weird’ family who ate eggplant, calamari, sushi and food with spices (not so much chilli, more tasty cumin etc).

Then 1990’s-2000 everyone caught up through travelling and tv chefs and ethnic restaurants on every high st.

Now everyone seems to be devolving to beige food and/or ‘we just eat THAT brand of xx otherwise not’. It’s getting hard to host a group again. I know that much. And not much of it can be put down to genuine food issues (which are important and serious).

I guess it’s busy lives, colliding with fussy eaters being indulged, with a pinch of ‘eating fussily makes me seem more special’.

Side note: saw a restaurant blackboard yesterday that offered Moules marinière and also Goat curry as the chef’s signature dishes. If only it could be possible to be great at both?!

I don’t like food that’s cooked alive.