Today at school we learned how to shuck oysters. I have never done this before, and I actually haven’t eaten many oysters in my time. However, I have eaten enough to know that I don’t like them raw, but I do enjoy them cooked. Luckily for me, we were cooking the oysters today.
The first thing we did was watch a video (yes, I said video, my school busted out the VCR!) on oyster production. We learned how they are grown, produced, packaged, shipped and shucked. The process is actually pretty interesting, but long to get into. If you’re interested, Google “oyster farming” and you can find a lot of information.
After the video we watched one of our chefs give us a demonstration on shucking oysters. We all gathered around the demo station, trying to get a glimpse of some secret that might make it easier!
To shuck an oyster, you first have to figure out which is the top and which is the bottom of the shell. You may laugh and say, “isn’t that obvious?” but it’s not! Even our chef wasn’t sure with his first one. The cup side (curved side) is the bottom, and the flatter side is the top. Then you need to take a shucking knife and wedge the tip in the “hinge” of the oyster. It’s like a little lip between the two shells. You wedge the knife in there and then turn it slightly to open the hinge. Before you yank open the shells, you need to slide the knife in and detach the abductor muscle from the top shell. This muscle keeps the oyster in place.
Once the top shell is off, run the shucking knife along the bottom of the oyster, again detaching the abductor muscle. While doing this whole process you need to make sure you don’t lose any of the oyster liquor from inside the shell, as people like to slurp it along with their raw oysters!
It’s quite a process to get these little things out of their shells! I had always heard that shucking oysters wasn’t the easiest thing, and it’s true! At first. As I was holding my first oyster in my left hand and the shucking knife in my right my chef came over and told me that I was scaring him and looked like I was going to hurt myself! So he showed me a different way to hold the oyster and got that one started for me. I did my next three myself, with a bit of trouble, and immediately decided I needed more practice. I decided I would borrow a shucking knife from school and buy some oysters on my way home to practice. More on that later.
The oysters we made at school were cooked. We breaded them with a mixture of flour, egg, crushed toasted quinoa, parsley and spices. I of course used potato flour. Once they were breaded we briefly shallow fried them until the breading was slightly crispy. We served them with brunoise carrots (tiny tiny cuts of carrots), julienned radish and cucumber and a beet juice emulsion.
They were really good! I really liked the smaller ones that I could just pop in my mouth. The crispyness of the breading mixed with the saltiness of the oyster and freshness of the radish, cucumber and carrot was fabulous! What I didn’t like was my one large oyster, because I had to eat it in two bites, and then the slimy texture of the oyster in the middle was more noticeable.
Our finished product:
Oysters breaded and shallow fried, served on the half shell with brunoise carrots, beet juice emulsion, cucumber, radish and herb salad.
Everyone had different reactions to the oysters. Some people loved them and were trying to steal some from other people, while some people didn’t like them at all, and were giving their oysters away.
I bought the oysters from Inlet Seafoods in Newport Village, Port Moody, and the gentleman who helped me was very helpful. He showed me two different kinds, and I picked the ones that looked the most like the oysters we had done at school. Although of course I can’t remember what they are called! When I got home with my dozen oysters I was determined to shuck them all. I grabbed a cloth and my shucking knife and went to it!
The first couple were very easy. The knife went in quickly, slid around and I got the shells open with minimal damage! Then I came to one that was crusted with barnacles. Hmmm, my chefs didn’t mention barnacles at school. I tried with this one, couldn’t get the knife to budge in, so I set it aside for later. I went though the rest and got them all done quickly. I shucked much better than I did at school, as well as quicker. Then I came back to the barnacle oyster. I tried again, broke the shell a little bit, but made no advancements in opening the shell. So I gave up. Although, in my defence, I think the reason I couldn’t open the shell was because the barnacles were encrusted along the two shells, keeping them closed. Or at least that’s what I’m telling myself!
So, on my second try shucking oysters I got 11 out of 12 of them done. Not bad! All in all, it was a successful oyster day!
