As much as we love mussels, they are definitely a labor-intensive dish to eat! And no matter how we do it, we always manage to end up with sticky fingers and dribbles of clam juice down the front of our shirt.
We're pretty informal when it comes to mussels, and our personal preference is scooping up a bit of the cooking broth and then slurping the mussel straight from its shell. This is honestly one of the most sensual and perfect eating experiences we can think of, and we find it satisfying in a way that goes way beyond simply filling our bellies.
That said, there are definitely some situations where this would be considered uncouth. Eating with in-laws or at a nice restaurant come to mind! In these situations, we opt for holding the shell in the fingers of one hand and using a fork to scoop out the meat. We lose our beloved pan juices, but it's definitely a neater way to eat.
Using an empty shell as a tweezer to pick out the mussel meat never occurred to us until we did a little research for this post. This strikes us a perfect compromise between slurping and using a fork, and we'll give it a try next time we have mussels.
And anyway you go, we think mopping up the leftover cooking broth with a little bread is a must. You just can't let that go to waste, proper etiquette or not!
Related: How to Clean and Debeard Mussels
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I learned the technique of using an already eaten mussel as tweezers from the French! It works amazingly, but people tend to find it strange, as I live...not in France.
I tend to go through and pull them all out of the shell just before serving, so nobody has to get sticky. I also tend to serve them over pasta or with bread, so the pan juices either go over the pasta, or get mopped up with bread. I LIKE eating them straight out of the shell, but my mother glared too often, so I don't do it anymore.
My fiance gets creeped out by them, too, if they get accidentilly squished, so pre-shelling them makes his life easier.
Yesterday I steamed mussels and clams and pulled out the cooked meaty bits to make a salad. That was very easy to eat. : )
Any and all methods!
Not like tweezers, exactly, but I do use half an empty shell as a utensil to break the connection between the mussel and the shell, kind of spooning the meat into my mouth.
Great, now I'm hungry.
Haha, I do not eat them.
At a fancy dinner party as a child, I very nicely ate the squiggly, rubbery, alien-looking things that were placed before me. I don't recall the taste, but simply hated the texture. They scared the ever-loving crap out of me, but I'm pretty sure my parents bought me a present afterward for being so well mannered.
Twenty years later, it's high time I get around to trying mussels (especially in light of my fondness for shellfish), but I just keep chickening out of ordering them.
Reading that link about debearding them certainly isn't helping my resolve ("debearding" sounds like you're preparing David the Gnome for dinner, no?).
I was instructed to use the empty shell as tweezers in Belgium, where they take their mussel-eating very seriously. And it's a pretty normal practice around here in Montreal (where all things French are revered)
Shell tweezers. It's fun to eat with your hands. You're going to get them dirty using a fork anyway. Might as well do it like the Belgians, where they know a thing or two about 'em.
Using an empty shell as tweezers, while on the patio of a restaurant atop a bluff over the Pacific, sitting on a rocking loveseat covered by a blanket, looking out at the sunset, glass of wine at my elbow. This restaurant makes the best mussels and has the best spot for eating them!
I use either a fork or an empty shell (but not as tweezers; like the poster above, I use the shell to scoop the mussel out of its shell and into my mouth).
I do use an empty half of a shell to spoon up the broth, if the bread isn't especially nice or if there isn't enough of it.
I use my fingers.
I don't have the slurping power to destroy that sinewy muscle that holds a mussel to it's shell in a single slurp. I'm surprised that other people do!
While we're on the subject, Staub's mussel pot looks very clever, although I don't I don't eat enough mussels to justify a large single purpose item like this:
http://www.cooksparaphernalia.co.uk/u_images/products/large/staub-family-mussel-pot-29cm.jpg
Well, the boy friend being frmo PEI (Prince Edward Island, eastern province of Canada that produces the best mussels around) picks them out with his fingers. And then, he does the stack: instead of leaving the shells all as they were in his bowl, he stacks the empty shells inside one onother, to maximize his bowl space lol When he is done he likes to go over the big pot where we cooked the mussels and have a slurp or 2 of the slaty broth...
It's his own thing!