Perfectly Tender Mussels In Garlicky Wine Broth

White wine steamed mussels are one of the easiest and most affordable ways to make restaurant quality seafood at home in this video I'm gonna show you my well-tested recipe while walking you through all of the most common mistakes Home cooks make and how to avoid them to get started. I'm gonna grab one pound of standard-issue black mussels This is gonna create an entree size portion of mussels for one person or like an appetizer size for two people now I'm using one pound here just because I think that is the Best way to illustrate the overall technique and cooking process But this recipe is very easily scaled up to or 3x and I'll explain how to do that later in the video Now if you're wondering where to get mussels because you've never bought them before I would say always start at a local seafood monger If you're lucky to have one in your town seafood mongers are gonna have a high volume of fresh seafood sales So that's going to ensure that the stuff in the case is getting turned over on a regular basis and that it's probably pretty good And that person has staked their reputation on the quality of their seafood So they're probably not gonna mess around trying to get away with mussels that are five to seven days old and just like fingers crossed that They're still fresh enough. They'll probably throw them away before selling you something bad the second option And I think it's the best option for most people is actually whole foods That might sound a little bit weird But I think for most people especially in the middle of the country that's gonna be the best seafood counter in your town now It's not the best of the best of the best, but it's quite good And I've never really had a bad experience and usually things are pretty fresh and the third option is a local grocery store But honestly, I really can't recommend that just because you can't really guarantee that the people at that store Know anything about seafood or how to handle it properly even though they might have been trained on it a little bit and you can't Guarantee that anyone's actually gonna be buying that seafood with enough frequency for them to turn over their supply before the mussels die Now speaking of freshness the best way to know if mussels are fresh is to just buy them from someone you trust or you could also just give Them a smell and if they have a clean brininess to them and they kind of smell like fresh ocean You're probably pretty safe and they're gonna be nice and fresh if they have any kind of fishy smell to them or they smell Like a dock where boats are hanging out. I don't know. I probably wouldn't trust it now before we start cooking these things I'm going to brine slash purge them to do that. I'm gonna mix 1,500 grams of water in a large container with 60 grams of salt and 500 Grams of ice then I'm just gonna jump in and stir until the salt is evenly dissolved This is gonna give me a brine. That is roughly three to four percent salinity, which is just me trying to mimic the ocean it's kind of like Like if a wave hits you in the face and some salt water gets in your mouth That's the experience. It should be quite salty. Then. I'm just gonna add the mussels in And I'm going to let them hang out in this icy salty water for 30 minutes now I'm doing this for two main reasons the first is this is gonna give the mussels a quick brine almost like we were doing it for a chicken breast or a Pork chop that's going to allow it to be more evenly seasoned throughout with salt and it's gonna change the texture So it's a little bit plumper and a little bit juicier And then the second reason is putting these back into some cold salty water Which is basically their natural environment allows them to push out a bunch of the grit that might be stored inside the muscle itself This is just gonna give you let's say a 90 to 95 percent chance that when you bite into the muscle There isn't gonna be a sandy bit that can kind of ruin the experience and I just think it's the pro move a lot of restaurants Don't do this and that's why you probably get a gritty bite like every third muscle. It can be a real bummer So I wouldn't skip it from here I'm gonna move these muscles over to the fridge so that they can purge for 30 minutes or so Might have noticed that I've got ice in there and they're in the fridge So I'm kind of doubling up on coldness and that's just to ensure that the muscles stay alive and stay as fresh as possible These things are basically dying to die So when you buy them, you got to put them on ice in your refrigerator to keep them as cold as possible And then through the entire preparation phase you got to keep them chillin I don't want to scare you guys and like make you think that you can kill them in a second But just be conscious keep them really chilly. So now while those are doing their thing in the refrigerator I'm just gonna prep up some Aromatics real quick for that. I've got one nice size shallot here, and I'm gonna give it what I call a brunoise All chefs call it that it's not like my term. Then let's turn 90 degrees and chop this into little Eighth inch size pieces a brunoise is the smallest size dice in the canon of French knife cuts and it's really used mainly in sauces where you want the thing to melt quickly and kind of incorporate in the background and if you don't have shallots on Hand or if you can't find them a red or white onion would also work Just make sure that you're cutting it really small like this and just know that the flavor is gonna be a little less subtle And a little bit more hot like with that kind of intense allium flavor and in total I need 30 grams of brunoise shallots behind the shallots I'm gonna grab six to seven large garlic cloves and then this tool which is the Lagerstrom home goods garlic press Which is finally for sale and it just so happens that Lagerstrom home goods It's kind of like the sponsor of this video. So let me tell you about this real quick right now I know there's a lot of people out there who are thinking This is just a blatant cash grab from a youtuber to try and get some extra money so that he can buy some jet skis I totally get why you would think that because honestly a lot of the creator products that are on the market are just Pre-existing products that have a logo slapped on them and there has been no development and the products kind of suck This is not that I spent the last two years Designing and developing this thing from scratch so that I could make the best garlic press on the market in my opinion up until now There has been let's say fine garlic presses out there, but nothing that's truly great now if you're the type of person who has a bad garlic press sitting in their drawer or if you've never bought one before and You're thinking to yourself a garlic press seems like a pretty stupid single-use tool That's just gonna waste space and waste my money I could see why you would think that but let me just say that outside of cooking for this channel Which we use the garlic press for all the time at home I use a garlic press like four to six times per week mainly because I like garlic I think it should go in most dishes and chopping it with a knife sucks ass. It gets sticky It takes a long time and it's just overall not fun A nice garlic press can turn that four minutes of garlic drudgery into ten seconds of garlic ecstasy So, why is this a good garlic press? Well first it's made from 100% stainless steel and it is Super heavy-duty and robust and as far as I know there are no other garlic presses on the market that have opted to go 100% stainless not only because they think that the market won't want something of very high quality That's my guess or because working with stainless steel is expensive up front because you got to make the molds and stuff But I think it leads to the best product and when you pick this thing up It's very apparent that it is high quality. It honestly feels like that wrench that's been in your grandpa's toolbox since like 1955 and it's actually my goal for this garlic press to last your entire life Like this thing should be present at your funeral. That would be a best-case scenario for me Another thing that I really like about this garlic press is that it has two different basket sizes included with the purchase One is a small hold basket which gives you more of a mince Which is really good for any application where you want the garlic to kind of melt into the background like a sauce a soup or A stew or raw applications and then the second basket is larger holes, which gives you more of a chopped garlic texture Which is a little bit larger and that's good for high heat Applications like sauteing or wok frying where small garlic can burn quickly now also Since these baskets are removable that means that the entire thing is super easy to wash and since it's stainless steel It is dishwasher safe You'd be surprised how many garlic presses on the market are made from multiple plastic and the pressing part is fused into the handles So when you go to wash it, you have to I guess stick your finger in the basket to get the gunky stuff out It's just a bad design And so I've opted to make this removable to eliminate any of that hardship It has a basket that is about two times as large as any other garlic press that I've seen and that means that you can Press up to four cloves at once or one very large garlic clove that hasn't been peeled. That's kind of awesome Now I always buy peeled garlic because I think it's easier and like I said, I use a lot of garlic But if you're buying whole heads of garlic and you don't want to peel it just throw the cloves in here and you can press Them unpeeled no problem for logistical reasons This product is only going on sale in the US to start and we're selling it for $49 and if you want to buy it, I will put a link in the description beneath this video now I know some people are gonna balk at that price point and think that it's way too high But truly if you want to make a great product from a great material like this, you just got to spend some money There's a lot of plastic garlic presses out there that are gonna break in a year or two or other garlic presses that aren't gonna Do the job very well So I think that $49 is actually a pretty good price for what you're getting here again If you want to give the Lagerstrom home goods garlic press a try the link is in the description And if you do buy it and you do like it, please take a second to give us a review on Amazon That's gonna do a good thing for the brand on the Amazon platform Hopefully get the product seen by more people and give us a little bit of capital to invest in some other products where there can Be some improvements made. Thank you guys for watching these vids I hope that you trust me enough that when I say this is a good product you believe me And yeah, I hope you like it back to the video. Okay, once I've got my shallot and garlic prepped up I'm just gonna head over to the fridge to grab the mussels, which at this point should be sufficiently purged and Almost ready to cook but we also need to give them just a little bit of a cleanup the outside of these should have been cleaned up by the People who pulled them out of the ocean and then maybe again by the fishmonger before they're packaged But sometimes I've got a little bit of gunk on the outside And it's just best to come back with a paper towel and kind of wipe them off just to make sure that any of the tritus That's on there is getting cleaned up or if they're really really gritty You might want to scrub them down with a steel wool and give them a little bit of a rinse under the sink But these are looking really nice. They don't really need much more than a wipe off And then once I've got them cleaned up, I need to pull the beard off of the flat side of the mussel This is what mussels used to attach to stuff in the ocean to keep them from getting blown around and it's not delicious It's obviously very fibrous and we want to get rid of it So the best way to do that is to grab a paper towel grab the beard and then just pull Towards the tip end or I guess the hinge end of the mussel to get rid of it and if there's any a little bit of beardiness on the backside which happens sometimes you can kind of just get in there with a paper towel and Wipe it off. It's as simple as that So we're just gonna give the mussels a quick wipe down with a paper towel or a cloth or a steel wool and then we're gonna Find the flat side. We'll grab that little bit of the beard and then we'll yank down towards the hinge and we're good to go Also, if you're wondering how to tell if a mussel is dead or not during this purging process if it's open and you come back and That one's probably dead now If you've got a mussel that's kind of open during the purging process You kind of want to squeeze it and it should close back down or kind of like agitated a little bit That should tell you that the mussel that it's like hey, bro Bad things are happening clam back up and if it doesn't close it could be dead like this one is not closing at all So I'm gonna get rid of it just to be safe when I'm cooking a pound of mussels I almost always overshoot a little bit just because you're gonna have probably two to three mussels per pound that are a little bit Sussy and you need to get rid of another good Thing to note is if a mussel shell is cracked or broken I would just get rid of it That mussel is probably dead and you definitely don't want it to contaminate the other mussels in the batch by letting its poisonous juice out Into the dish so it's better to be safe and sorry once my mussels are all cleaned up I'm just gonna set those aside and Get the bread figured out actually before I start cooking because this is all gonna go very quickly now for most people I think a Standard issue French baguette that's taken bake from a place like Aldi or the grocery store is gonna be your best bet now if you live By a bakery just like for a fishmonger if you live close to a very high quality product Definitely source that out But sometimes it's gonna be pretty difficult to find really nice Crusty bread these little Aldi take-and-bake baguettes are not world's best bread But they are extremely good dipping bread and they definitely do a turn. So before I start cooking here I'm just gonna throw this thing into a 450 425 F oven and let it bake up and get crispy so that by the time the mussels are ready That's gonna be ready to go from here. I'm going to get a Saucier preheated over medium heat This is my preferred mussel pan because it's deep enough to hold all the aromatics and the mussels and then it's got a lid So I can trap steam It's perfect for one to two pounds of mussels But if you want to cook let's say three pounds of mussels to serve them to a crowd of four or five six people I would say get like a five to seven quart Dutch oven and use like a three times recipe I've got my pan preheated over medium heat here. I've got my garlic and shallots. I've got my white wine I've got a little tomato paste. I've got cold cubed butter oil salt pepper mussels. This is all my mise en place This dish cooks really fast. So you want to be ready to go? You don't want to be running around your kitchen because these mussels can go from perfect to overcooked pretty quickly So first thing in is gonna be about two to three tablespoons of olive oil a pretty liberal amount then I'm gonna add in my aromatics a SPOS Strong pinch of salt then I'm gonna jump in give it a stir and I think I'll lower the temperature a little bit Just based on how these are gripping right off the bat. I think this is a touch warm so I'm gonna go from like a seven out of ten heat down to Let's say like a four or five out of ten now from here I'm just going to sweat this for about five minutes or so until the shallots and garlic are softened and really aromatic now I really don't want to develop color here If that was the case we'd be sautéing which is a slightly different cooking technique with sautéing you're using pretty high acute heat to get a little bit of color and a little bit of life on the outside of a Aromatic or a vegetable. It's a really quick cooking process Compared to sweating with sautéing you're using like seven or eight out of ten heat Maybe nine out of ten and with sweating you're closer to like four or five out of ten, and it's just a totally different Result you're going for for sweating You're trying to soften the vegetables completely without developing color and also you want to cook off a lot of moisture So you can concentrate the flavor my pans getting a little bit hot. So I'm gonna add a tiny splash of water To deglaze a bit just to cool the temp off These little countertop burners are really aggressive and after about two minutes I've got some softening going on things are looking good at this point. I'm gonna add in a Pinch of chili flakes and I'm gonna add in a little bit of black pepper as well to bloom that in the oil And I'm gonna continue to sweat this for another two minutes or so I just want to bloom that chili out in the oil a little bit to get it infused with a little bit of extra flavor This isn't enough chili to make anything spicy It's just enough to kind of wake up the flavors a little bit at this point. The veggies are softened They haven't taken on any color and they've evaporated most of their moisture to the point where now they're starting to take on a little Bit of color if we were to keep going we develop them some browning which is not what we want. So from here I'm gonna add in 15 grams of tomato paste. I'm gonna stir that in and sizzle it for about 60 seconds or so It's kind of a signature move of mine And I think it's essential when it comes to tomato paste to wake up its flavor hitting it with some dry heat like this I wouldn't say caramelizes the sugars But it does change the flavor of the tomato paste and makes it a bit more mature and a bit less canned Tasting straight out of the little baby can it can taste a little bit flat a little bit tinny and that can come through in The final dish I think this just brings a little bit more of a robust tomato flavor that I just like better Okay, after 60 seconds, the tomato paste is starting to glaze up the bottom of the pot here Things are smelling super fragrant. If we were to go much further than this, we'd start to get caramelization Which is again dark flavors not what we want. So to stop this high heat cooking I'm gonna add in a hundred grams of white wine To deglaze the pot then I'm gonna jump in right away Give everything a stir to scrape up the bottom a little bit just to make sure nothing is stuck And then I'm gonna bring this up to a rapid simmer. If you're wondering about what type of wine to use I would say Soft Blanc Chardonnay Pinot Grigio, those would be the best options anything sweeter than that And the final mussel broth is gonna be a little bit syrupy and not exactly what you're looking for And I would also say avoid oak Chardonnay because that oakiness again can get in the way of the very delicate briny mussel flavor Once we're up to a simmer here, the mussels are gonna go right in Of course, they're super cold. So that's gonna cool everything down So I'm just gonna allow this to come back up to a simmer then we're gonna start cooking the mussels Now you notice that I didn't reduce the wine or anything like that. I just brought it up to a boil This is by design when I was developing this recipe the first four or five maybe six times I made it I reduced the wine all the way to our sec or like a very syrupy glaze like I would do for any Classic French white wine sauce, but then when I was eating the final dish I was like this doesn't quite taste Vibrant or alive and I'm not getting that fresh wine flavor that I want and then I figured out it's just because I was over Cooking it. I basically don't want to cook off that estuary like fermented aromatic wine flavor So just whatever it takes to bring it to a boil Then we're gonna steam the mussels and that should more than preserve that nice fresh wine flavor So once this is back up to a boil, I'm gonna turn this all the way up to high So we're at a really hard simmer then the lid goes on and I'm going to simmer these mussels for about two and a half To three minutes at some points. I'll just come back and give everything a little bit of a shimmy This is one reason why I really love this saucier is it has these rounded sides So when you go to swirl the pot the mussels can kind of fold over each other And it's just like a really really pleasant cooking vessel aside from a Dutch oven This is probably my favorite piece of cookware of all time It's just such a pleasure to cook with and every time we bust it out from the pantry I'm like, man, why don't I use this more? Anyways, we're about halfway at this point I think it's a good point to just come back and peek make sure things are opening But you don't want to let too much steam out. I also just want to clarify that I'm using a hard boil here. Not only because I think it gives the best freshest results just by being a little bit more aggressive But also if you're using a boil It's gonna be the same for you as it is for me So the cook time that I tell you is more or less going to be the same if you were using a low simmer That could mean a lot of different things and then your cook time could be off by a minute or so and your results might Not be what they should be after Two and a half minutes. I'm gonna come back and take a look and see how many of my mussels have opened up Pretty much all of them. In fact, I don't really see any dead mussels in here We're I would say we're at about 90% of the way cooked Which is where I want to be because the mussels are not gripping the other side of the shell But they're still kind of wide and in the process of kind of closing up. That's where we want them to be We want a little bit more room to groove here because we need still need to add in the butter So from here, I'm gonna turn the heat down all the way to low then I'm gonna add in 60 grams of cold Cubed butter cold just because it emulsifies a little bit better than warm and when I say emulsify I mean the butter is getting turned in a tiny little droplets that are held in suspension in the water This leads to a much more silky opaque Luxurious results that has a better texture If I were to just put the butter on top of these mussels and let it melt The sauce or like the white wine broth would be pretty greasy because the butter would just be sitting on top Swirling it like this agitates the butter as it melts Which again breaks it in a tiny little droplets that get held in suspension and it just leads to a much more pro result Okay, let's take a look-see here Most of the butter is melted in I'm just gonna keep swirling. Oh My god, though You can just tell already how totally beautiful that looks This dish just has so much finesse I can't think of another dish that delivers such a beautiful product in such a little amount of time now I think all of us who enjoy mussels have been burned by mediocre ones at times or at least I'll speak for myself The last like four versions I've had in restaurants have not been great But testing this recipe has totally made me fall in love with them again And I can totally see that if you take care to brine them properly to wash them properly cook them properly You're just gonna end up with something that is so so epic Anyways butter is emulsified in you can see that we've got this a nice opaque broth sitting in the bottom here Now before we call this good It's really important to come back and taste this broth for seasoning because the only salt that we've added in at this point is up Front with the aromatics now the mussels themselves have salt obviously because they're from the ocean, but it might not be enough. Oh man That's really freaking good. I think maybe just like a touch Because you have to think of this broth not just as something you're gonna eat with the mussel It's also like a dip for the bread. It's actually mainly a dip if you actually think about it So I think it's important to it be a little bit on the bright side as far as seasoning goes now earlier I mentioned I was gonna call out dead mussels and at this point if any are fully closed That's a good sign that they are dead and you shouldn't eat them You shouldn't try and pry them open basically just throw them away now if there are mussels in here that are not Fully fully open like if they're 30 or 40 percent you can definitely pry those open like I have no doubt that this mussel was Alive just for whatever reason it didn't spread its wings as much of its as its brethren now one last thing I want to call out here is that a lot of recipes will Kind of scare you into under cooking your mussels. They'll say watch out These are so easy to make rubbery and when they're rubbery, they're hell That's not been my experience muscles are more forgiving than you think. Yes, they can get rubbery But that's only if you hammer them like a well-done steak if you're somewhere around six minutes You're gonna have really rubbery mussels But if you stay somewhere around two minutes 30 seconds to three and a half minutes or even four minutes You're gonna be fine an undercooked muscle in my opinion is way worse than a slightly overcooked one. They're snotty They're soft and they haven't let out their flavor and they're possibly raw and like not that safety So just keep it chilling on cook time and lean closer to three and a half than two The final step here is to add in a healthy amount of finely chopped parsley And then I'll just come back and swirl that in to get even coverage And at this point if you're feeling like you don't have quite enough broth You can always add in a splash of clam juice or store-bought chicken stock to bulk it up a little bit You're not really gonna be diluting the flavor But in general, I think you need somewhere between like half and a cup of liquid per pound of mussels So things are looking really good I'm gonna grab a big-ass bowl And a spider and I'm gonna try and plate these mussels up in a way where the muscle openings are facing up So that way when I pour the broth over it just kind of rains down onto the actual meat itself Instead of just bouncing off the shell. This is how we would do it in a restaurant Oh, we got a loose muscle meat here, baby one for dad Mmm Holy ----, like I said, I've had some mid muscle experiences over the last couple years but getting back into this one I just has gotten me so excited for this dish again And once all my muscles are facing the sky thirsty for some broth, I'm gonna give them a little bath Oh my Look at that. Maybe a little olive oil just to chef it up fresh green olive oil with fresh white wine That's always nice. Then I'm gonna grab a couple of pieces of my crusty bread here You could snug them up it directly in the bowl, whatever you want to do first I'm gonna taste the muscle then I'll dip a piece of bread. It's full of broth It's almost like a oyster where it's sitting in Mianette, but instead of vinegar, it's butter sauce Mmm that is Luxurious pleasure Honestly, these things are five dollars a pound. How is that even possible? That is more pleasurable than any scallop. Like if you get these just right This is one of the best shellfish you can eat. I'm not even joking you guys the meat is so Succulent, it's so plump. It is so tender It's perfect. There's no grit in sight either. I Love it. Then I'm gonna jump in and saturate a piece of bread here I am just as excited for this as I am the shellfish. This is actually almost more important Mmm man It's running down my lips There's just a really important point here that I need to get across to you guys. And that's this broth has Brilliant wine flavor. It has all of those Mineraly estuary qualities that you get in a crispy glass of cold white wine floating on top of this brilliant Briny seafood flavor It's just a marriage made in heaven and it's one of the best things that like a human being can eat These things only cost five dollars a pound to you guys. So while you're a human being in this realm of existence I really think you need to gift yourself this experience. It is so Frickin good as always the full recipe is in the description beneath this video and there's a link to my blog where there's a long Version and this is kind of fun to say the garlic press is on sale as a reminder Link will be down in the description as well and linked over at my blog Brian Lagerstrom calm I really hope you guys like it. I spent so much mental effort trying to make it good So if you do buy it and you do like it, please please leave a review on Amazon because that will do Wonders for our new emerging store and will help more people see the product as always guys Thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you for sticking around at the end of the video. I'll see you next time