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!

I'm on the west coast of Scotland and we have a local fishmonger so I can get great fish/seafood.

Mussels are the absolutely worst things I can eat in terms of a violent sickness reaction. Obvs I avoid them like the plague, but once I went to supper with a friend who had made a mixed rice salad concoction. I ate it in the semi-dark and when i got home I was appallingly sick for many hours. When I checked with my friend, the dish, of course had mussels in it. It is a very nasty allergy.

speakout but that is the point. We should be able to have decent seafood in the UK but, as you say, it is landed here and then shipped off to mainland Europe.
We were on the Atlantic coast and not the Med so there was more locally sourced seafood.

Scotland here too- lots of small fish vendors at local harbours with locally landed catch.
Easy to buy live produce- crabs/lobsters/prawns/laungoustines/mussels.

Just had them for dinner... yum!

I love them. My DBs friend swears by Aldi’s ones and does them in a delicious white wine and veggie broth . I’ve not been ill from them. Have had them in France and Spain and enjoyed them. I always feel a bit nervous that I’ll have a bad one and get ill but so far so good. I don’t have the confidence to do them regularly at home as I feel I’m playing Russian Roulette with my stomach. But that daft really as I make chicken and prawn based meals a lot and have never been ill from those. And I imagine they’re just as likely to as mussels.

Speakout, they're gooseneck barnacles, delicious! You can buy them in this country but I've only ever found them online.

I love them, but alas, they cause me to projectile vomit. A real bummer.

Anyway OP, despite loving every other seafood going, I actually really don't like mussels, it's the texture that I don't get on with, it's not very toothsome.

I made a bouillabaisse yesterday as we had pescetarian friends visiting and that had monkfish, bream, clams, mussels and langoustines. It was absolutely delicious, I didn't have any of the mussels though, just extra clams!

feellikeanalien

I think there are a number of factors.- I don't know here you live, but here is Scotland there is a good availability of local seafood.
The cold waters of the Northern Atlantic produce slower growing and sweeter seafood and command a higher price than Southern Atlantic produce.
Large rich European cities pay a better price for UK produce, it's a case of supply and demand.
Although it is possible to buy good seafood locally here in Scotland it is still a speciality market, not a huge local demand.

Seafood was regarded as poverty food in areas where it is abundant.
My grandmother would collect oysters from unpolluted seashores in the 1890s- they would be used in pies as a way of bulking out beef, and were regarded as poverty food.
Some of that idea pervades mederns day thinking.
Fallen out of fashion, and although abundant still for decades, locals would prefer the delights of Findus Crispy Pancakes in the 1970s, suid and crustatceans would be thrown back overboard.

So the issue is complex.

Nope, I don't do shellfish.

I used to work for a mussel farm, and I know how long it takes for the results to come back from the lab tests. By the time the results are back, those mussels have been sold and eaten.

I'd be so unhappy if I arrived for dinner at a friend's and was served mussels, or any other seafood. I'd eat the chips, bread and salad, though

I don't like the taste or texture of any of it and also find that the older I get, the more reactions I develop to things that live in the sea (ending with me spending the night lying by the loo in between vomiting), so I avoid fish too, now.

I also love Limpets. Which are similar to mussels but often better I think - but maybe that's the way they are cooked/served in Portugal, Azores and the Canaries. Never seen them in this country tho.

Our seafood comes from that there sea outside my southern European flat.
Or maybe the fisherman are just pretending and flying it in from Aberdeen.

Love mussels. I’d be buzzing if I turned up and you’d made them for tea.

I’m violently allergic to them, I always mention it to friends before a dinner party but feel silly doing so as no one has ever intended to serve them!

I can eat prawns, scallops, lobster etc no bother but mussels are a complete no no for me. And as a result I’ve never dared try oysters!

I like them but they don't like me. At all...🤢

Does everyone else who likes them eat them by using the first one as a pincer and then stacking the shells inside each other?
Yes, that's what I do!

It's the only way, and once you know, you realise it's the easiest way.

I think the pincer way is a bit wanky actually. Done by people who like to show how incredibly au fait they are with seafood.

And the juice runs down your arm.

Just pick them up and fork them out. Less messy.

Erm....it’s just the easiest and most practical way to eat them Leflic nothing wanky or show offy about it and it’s done that way by most^ people as far as I can tell.

Are you one of those people who insists on cutting spaghetti into small pieces and eating it with a knife a fork? Do you think twirling your fork in spaghetti is wanky too and only done by people trying to show they are au fait with pasta? What a very odd attitude.

I'm a mussel forker too.

Why is eating them the most practical way wanky?
Seriously, some people are weird

I also eat with chopsticks in Chinese/Japanese restaurants.
Is it wanky because I'm British, even if everyone around me is also using them?

I can’t stand them but wouldn’t eat them anyway. Met an Intensive care consultant who reckoned he saw about 1-2 deaths a year (large university teaching hospital) from organ failure through eating mussels and the high levels of some chemical I can’t remember - possibly magnesium. He said it’s down to individual mussels so you can share a portion and one person get sick and not the other. Their job is to clean the ocean floor apparently but I would think the problem wouldn’t exist with mussels farms?