These smokey-sweet grilled mussels are a great spin on a traditional summertime grilled seafood.
I absolutely love mussels; they’re salty and sweet all at once, and the perfect vessel to slurp up all the delicious cooking liquid or sauce that they come bathed in. But as with most food that I love, I’m always asking myself: how could it be even better? The answer with mussels came to me on a beautiful warm summer night: grilled mussels. I thought that adding an element of smoke to the mussels would act to both bring out and also counterbalance their natural sweetness, and that’s exactly what it did.
As a kid, I generally hated seafood. It took one of our many trips to Italy, this one when I was around 12 years old, for me to realize that not all seafood is as icky as I once thought. While on the Amalfi Coast, a place with some of the freshest and most delicious seafood in the world, I fell in love with calamari. I ordered it in almost every restaurant we went to, garnering me the nickname “calamari Kate” not only because of my love for the food, but also partially out of relief from my family (who generally all love seafood) that I was not going to hate seafood my entire life.
As an adult, I’m still not the biggest fan of certain types of seafood (it may be some of residual dislike remaining from my childhood) but there are other types of seafood that I absolutely love, mainly shellfish. And I think out of all shellfish (yes, crab and lobster included) mussels just may make it to the top of my list. My grilled mussels are cooked with almost the same technique as normal mussels, only instead of allowing them to steam and open in a covered pot over the stove, I put them on a nice hot grill and covered it. Five minutes later, almost all my mussels were opened and ready to eat, already infused with that grilled smokey flavor.
As delicious as these grilled mussels are on their own, I didn’t want to loose out of my favorite part of mussels: dunking crusty bread in that savory cooking broth. So I made a quick broth inside on the stove, with garlic sautéed in butter, white wine, lemon, and some fresh herbs. You can also add a dash of smoked paprika to the broth as well, just to tie in the smokiness. When the mussels are done cooking on the grill, add them straight into the broth, but be careful removing them from the grill. You will notice that the mussels themselves still contain some liquid within their shells once cooked; do you best to transfer them without spilling the liquid out, so that all of that briny flavor combines with your broth. This way you’ll have the best of both worlds in this dish; sweet and smokey grilled mussels, and that briny sand savory broth for dunking.
- 2 lbs fresh mussels
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 2 cloves garlic
- 3-4 lemons
- ½ cup white wine
- 1 cup fresh herbs of choice, minced - I used parsley, basil, and oregano
- Olive oil
- ½ teaspoon smoke paprika - optional
- For the mussels:
- Preheat the grill to medium heat.
- Clean mussels and remove beards. Put mussels on preheated grill, doing your best to keep them flat, and close lid. Grill until mussels are just beginning to open, about 5 minutes. After 7 minutes, discard any that have not opened. Remove mussels from grill, being careful to keep juices inside shell, and transfer to a large bowl.
- Cut 1 or 2 lemons in quarters and rub with olive oil. Grill over medium heat until slightly charred, 3-4 minutes.
- For the broth:
- In a sauté pan over medium heat, sauté garlic in butter until just beginning to brown. If you are using smoked paprika, add it now.
- Add white wine and juice of two lemons to pan and reduce slightly to cook off alcohol, about 5 minutes.
- Transfer mussels and juices to pan and toss to coat in broth. Add herbs and toss briefly. Serve with grilled lemon for topping and crusty bread for dunking.
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