Jonathan: Wait, I’m looking down below and there isn’t a recipe. What’s going on?
Emilie: Well we haven’t written it yet, obviously. Plus, I was thinking something a little different for this post. Let’s just talk about oysters.
Jonathan: No recipe, got it.
Emilie: I mean, do you really need a recipe for shucking oysters at home?
Jonathan: Not really, at its most simple, its shuck and eat. We found the instructions on shucking oysters over at Serious Eats very useful.
Emilie: Do you remember your first oyster?
Jonathan: Yes! I think so? We’ve had so many. But we definitely first tried them together, and I believe it was at Puritan and Company in Cambridge.
Emilie: I was a little nervous to try them, considering they are an uncooked food, and I was raised to be super distrustful of food cooked to a less-than-super-well-done degree. But after we tried a few oysters and realized that they taste like the experience of being near the ocean, we were hooked!
Jonathan: Part of the anxiety was that you just read that the freshest oysters can be served still alive.
Emilie: Yeah, that was freaky and kind of cool. Apparently sometimes after shucking the oyster is still alive, and you can see the heart beating! Crazy, weird, and about as fresh as you can get!
Jonathan: As a cheap person of Dutch ancestry, one of my favorite aspects is that you can frequently buy them for just $1! We encountered so many $1 oyster happy hours in the northeast, and knowing they came out of the ocean in the last 24 hours just makes them that much more special.
Emilie: We love them so much that we wanted to try to shuck oysters at home. Having seen the skilled oyster shuckers at restaurants around Boston, we thought it looked like a fun food project. How hard could it be?
Jonathan: Turns out that an organism with a shell literally designed to protect it is actually pretty hard to get open! Couple that with not having the right tool (namely, an oyster shucking knife) and it was kind of a bother. Learn from our mistake and buy an oyster shucking knife before you attempt this at home!
Emilie: You want to hold the oyster with the flat shell up and with a kitchen towel in one hand, to prevent a self-stabbing accident, as you will have to point the sharp end of the knife in the hinge of the oyster shell. The best spot to start to pry the oyster open is just to the side of the hinge. It is more of a gentle poke and twist, until it gives way. Once it is open, slide the knife down through the top shell and separate the top shell from the meat of the oyster.
Jonathan: Repeat, gentle. We managed to break the tip off one of our knives doing this the first time. This all sounds really easy until you’re there trying to break open a supposedly edible rock with a knife and grunting like a caveman.
Emilie: Oh we forgot the first step: check to make sure you are not eating rocks…
Jonathan: So important. Once you slide the knife down and around, keep the oyster level so you don’t spill any of the juice. It’s just the seawater that’s been hanging out inside the oyster, but it’s why you have the wonderful briney flavor along with the oyster.
Emilie: Pull off the flat shell, pick off any pieces of the shell that might have dropped into the brine, and then run your knife very gently under the oyster itself to make sure it’s disconnected from the lower shell. Shucking success!
Jonathan: So, the debate: what are you supposed to use for toppings?
Emilie: Lemon, obviously, but you can certainly serve these with a cocktail sauce, horseradish, or vinegar. Not really a debate, though, is it?
Jonathan: No, the sweetness of cocktail sauce or spice of horseradish is just too much and masks the unique oyster’s flavor. The lemon or vinegar is really the only way to go. Coupling the raw brine with an acid is just the right addition while still being able to taste the specific flavor of the oyster.
Emilie: So spritz with lemon, bring the oyster up to your mouth, and slurp it down! It only takes a couple chews, and then swallow and think of the sea.
Jonathan: It’s a unique texture, for sure, and I get why some people might not like it. But the taste! Think of the sea indeed, and hear gulls and breeze and waves and… was that a tugboat?
Emilie: Huh?
Jonathan: Got a little lost there, sorry. But the specificity of place is real with oysters. And you really can tell the difference between oysters from different locations. Word of the day: Merroir.
Emilie: Like terroir for wine, where the particular environment matters a lot in how it tastes. But for oysters and the sea!
Jonathan: Some can be sweeter, saltier, or more minerally. The flavor can also change during the year, as oysters are better during the winter months when they are eating a lot to store energy for the winter. During the summer, they are more focused on reproducing, and they are just as edible, but are usually a little smaller.
Emilie: That recent episode of Gastropod about oysters explains much more of these details. We’ve had oysters from all over. Those ones we tried in Seattle were so different! Smaller, a lot saltier, and sort of funkier? Not sure that’s the right description, but it was interesting to try.
Jonathan: Clearly we’re a little partial to the oysters of the northeast. So, what’s your favorite?
Emilie: Hmm, I think best oysters we’ve ever had were in Wellfleet, MA during that camping trip in October. We ate outside at Mac’s Shack and had oysters and a nice white wine. As we’ve said, part of the joy of eating oysters is the experience, and if you can plan a trip to cape cod just to eat oysters, that is a good enough reason!
Jonathan: It also helped that it was just the right time of year in the fall (a week before their annual oyster festival), a trip for our anniversary, and just a generally quintessentially New England experience. And that’s another reason we wanted to shuck our own oysters: because we’re moving away from the northeast and it will be quite a while before we have fresh, excellent oysters again!
Emilie: That’s right! We are moving to Chicago! It is bittersweet to leave Boston and all of the delicious new england food, but we are planning a few upcoming posts to say farewell to New England, and hello to Chicago.
Jonathan: So get excited for recipes featuring Chicago sausage, Michigan blueberries, new and exotic cheeses from Wisconsin, and whatever great lakes fish we can get our hands on. To new adventures: Oyster cheers! *clink* Just don’t spill the brine.
