British Mussels

[jourdain2]

In the supermarket I noticed Scottish mussels for sale at a reasonable price for once. Haven't had 'Moules Mariniere' & frites since we left France, so I bought a 1Kg pack. It was towards the end of the day and there weren't many 1kg packs left so the assistant briskly said "2 for the price of 1" - Great! I've just prepped the mussels and have thrown away very nearly half of them.

Can someone tell me if this is the norm in the UK, please? I'm used to ditching a few. Back later, must get the 'frites' on!

[retrocop]

Geoff P also provides a recipe that they use in France using Red wine????
Jourdain
Did you ever see moules marinere cooked with vin rouge.? I have always used white but why not I suppose ?

[ummmm]

From what I'm reading mussels sold in/for supermarkets are already cleansed so not storing in water advice is probably why...

[diddlydo]

I buy 1 kilo nets from Waitrose and the quality has been rubbish lately - far too many that are either broken or open so have to be binned. I weighed the discarded ones from the net I bought last Saturday - 12 ounces out of a 1 kilo bag! I shall be going in with my receipt and getting a double refund - they don't expect you to take the mussels back thank goodness!

[jourdain2]

I've seen (and eaten) moules cooked all sorts of ways - Provencale uses red
wine, Basquez is really delicious. France has become quite adventurous with them - I didn't fancy curried ones though.

Think one of them must have been a bit dodgy last night, I've been a bit queasy all day :(

[jourdain2]

Good luck diddly-do - that's terrible wastage.

[Mosaic]

It seems to be that the best of the catches get sold to Europe - what ends up in UK shops is the second best. Oddly the same phenomenon can be seen with tinned sardines and tinned anchovies - much better cuts to be found in the ones from French supermarkets.

[ummmm]

When I was in Malta earlier this year you could only get Scottish mussels.

[jourdain2]

Think you may be right, Mosaic. One thing I really missed in France was watercress, they sell nearly all of theirs to the UK!

[jomifl]

It's snails that you clean with bran. Mussels are filter feeders and wouldn't recognised a bran flake if it bit them in the ...whatever.
If you have a lot of mussels that appear to be dead (because they are open) there is hope.. put them in a tray of cold water with salt added at about 1tsp per pint. They may well recover and close up (to be eaten) if not then bin them.

[retrocop]

Bran flakes don't bite the .a..se. of mussels.???? OK so I might of meant rolled oats. They don't have teeth either. :-)