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In nearly every grocery store in this country, there's a net bag lying on the ice in the seafood case, 2 lb, about $5.
Sal Rizzo argues live mussels are a sweeter, cheaper, more sustainable alternative to farmed shrimp, explaining sweetness, price math, buying tips, and cooking.
Key Takeaways
- Live mussels are a sweeter, cheaper, and more transparent seafood choice than farmed shrimp.
- Price should be compared per meal, not per pound, since shells add weight without food value.
- Freshness of live mussels can be verified easily by checking whether they close and how they are stored.
What the video covers
- Net bags of live mussels sit near the shrimp in most US seafood cases and cost about $5 for 2 lb.
- Most US shrimp are farmed abroad and pass through many costly handling steps, including feeding, peeling, soaking, and freezing.
- Rope-grown mussels need no feed and are grown in cold bays, so they are cheap for practical reasons.
- Mussels store glycogen, a sugar-based energy reserve, which makes their meat taste naturally sweet, especially in cold months.
- The liquor released when mussels open becomes a free, flavorful broth for sauce.
- Counted per dinner, one 2-lb bag feeds four with pasta for roughly half the cost of a pound of shrimp.
- Restaurants price mussel dishes high relative to their low cost, which shows the ingredient's value.
- Mussels are nutritious, offering comparable protein, more iron than sirloin, and more B12 and omega-3 than shrimp.
- Live mussels can be checked for freshness by whether they shut when touched; a practical buying guide covers storage, shell condition, weight, and size.
- Cooking involves rinsing, not soaking, discarding unopened shells after cooking, and noting shellfish allergy differences between families.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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It is usually within arm's reach of the shrimp.
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And all day long, people lean straight over it to point at the shrimp.
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That bag is mussels, live ones in blue-black shells grown on ropes in cold water.
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The meat inside is sweeter than any shrimp in that case.
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Served over a pound of pasta, one bag fills the same four plates as a pound of shrimp for about half the money.
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And when the fish counter shuts for the night, that net bag is what leaves under the arm of the people who work there.
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The shrimp goes back in the cooler.
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Stay for 20 minutes, and here's what you leave with.
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The reason a mussel is sweeter, the honest arithmetic on the price, how to pick a good bag in 10 seconds, the one pot that cooks them in 5 minutes, and seven shrimp dinners you already make, each one rebuilt around this bag.
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If you have ever read the price on a pound of shrimp and worked out in your head how many each person at your table was going to get, subscribe to Sal Rizzo.
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This channel exists to find the better thing lying beside the expensive thing.
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It costs you nothing, and the next find shows up without you hunting for it.
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Begin with the shrimp, since that is what I am asking you to give up on a weeknight.
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Shrimp is the most eaten seafood in America, and nothing else is close.
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Better than 5 lb a person every year.
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Around nine in 10 of those shrimp were raised in a pond an ocean away.
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India, Ecuador, Indonesia, Vietnam.
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A pond is not a crime.
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But follow one shrimp from that pond to your skillet and count the hands on it.
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It gets fed every day of its life with a manufactured pellet, and feed is the biggest bill a shrimp farm pays.
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It gets netted, iced, and trucked to a plant.
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The head comes off, somebody or some machine peels it and pulls the vein.
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Very often it then sits in a soak that makes it take on extra water, water you later buy by the pound, and watch run out across your pan.
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After that, it is turned into a block of ice, loaded on a ship, held in a cold warehouse, and thawed again at your store so it can be laid out to look like it just arrived.
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Every one of those steps costs money, and that money is in the price on the sign.
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Every one of those steps also takes a little taste with it.
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Then look at the muscle.
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A baby muscle, no bigger than a grain of rice, gets tucked into a long mesh sleeve and hung from a rope in a cold bay.
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Most of the ones in American stores come from Prince Edward Island in Canada.
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Some come from Maine, some from Washington state.
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And then, for a year and a half to two years, nobody does anything at all.
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Nobody feeds it.
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A muscle eats what the tide carries past.
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There is no pellet, no pond to pump, no medicine in the water.
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When it is grown, the rope is hauled up, the muscles are rinsed, sorted, bagged alive, and put on a truck.
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The bag in your store was very likely hanging in the ocean less than a week ago.
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So, it is cheap for two plain reasons: nobody had to feed it and nobody had to peel it.
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Being poor food has nothing to do with it.
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On to the sweetness, because that is the claim people doubt until they taste it.
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Shellfish that stay in one place, mussels, scallops, oysters, store their energy as something called glycogen.
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It is a starch built out of sugar.
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And it is the reason a good scallop tastes sweet before you put anything on it.
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A muscle is full of it most of all from autumn through early spring, when the water is cold and the animal is fattening up.
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A shrimp is a swimmer.
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It burns what it eats.
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What sweetness it has is delicate, and a fair share of it is gone by the time the peeling, the soaking, and the thawing are finished.
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Cook the two in the same pot and taste them one after the other.
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The shrimp is clean and mild.
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The muscle tastes as if somebody seasoned it and added a pinch of sugar.
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And the muscle hands you something a shrimp never will.
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Inside every closed shell, there's a spoonful of liquid, part seawater, part the animal's own juice.
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When the shell opens in a hot pot, that liquid lets go.
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2 lb of mussels give up about a cup of it, salty and sweet together, and that cup is your sauce.
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With shrimp, the water in the pan is something you paid for and did not want.
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With mussels, it is the finest thing in the bowl, and it was free.
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So, the arithmetic, and no tricks with the price sign.
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The sign over the mussels says something like $2.50 or $3 a pound.
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The sign over the peeled raw shrimp says 11 or Or it would be easy to stand here and call that a quarter of the price.
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It is not, because more than half of what is in that net bag is shell.
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A 2-lb bag holds around 50 mussels, and those 50 give you about half a pound of meat and that cup of broth.
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So, do not count by the pound, count by the dinner.
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A pound of shrimp over a pound of linguine feeds four people, and the shrimp alone is 11 or $12.
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A 2-lb bag of mussels over the same linguine feeds the same four people, costs five or six, and brings its own sauce, so there is no bottle to buy and no extra butter to melt.
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That is half, counted the fair way.
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Or serve them the way a bistro does, as the whole meal in a deep bowl with bread.
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One bag is a generous dinner for two, about $3 a person for a dish that goes on a menu at 22.
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Restaurants worked this out a long time ago.
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A bowl of mussels costs a kitchen less than $2 to put up.
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It cooks in the time it takes to pour a drink, and it sells for 22 with a few slices of bread.
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No other shellfish on a menu earns like that, which is why every bistro in the country has a mussel pot on the first page.
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The kitchen is not doing you a favor.
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It is selling you the cheapest good thing it can buy.
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And that is the same reason the net bags went home with the crew at closing time.
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If people who handle seafood all day know to the penny what everything on that ice cost and how old it is, they are not going to spend $12 on shrimp that crossed an ocean as a block of ice when for five there's something alive in the case that left the water on Monday.
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The shrimp is what a counter sells.
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The mussels are what a counter eats.
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One more number and then we go shopping.
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Bite for bite, mussel meat carries about as much protein as shrimp.
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Ounce for ounce it has more iron than a sirloin steak, more vitamin B12 than nearly anything else you can buy, and several times the omega-3 of shrimp.
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It is not the budget choice that costs you something on the other end.
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On the label, it wins.
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So, why does almost everybody lean over that bag?
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Three fears, and I heard all three across the counter more times than I could count.
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They are alive.
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I will not know if one is bad.
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And I have no idea how to clean them.
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Each of those is a 10-second problem.
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And the first one is not a problem at all.
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It is the best thing about them.
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A fillet cannot tell you how old it is.
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A thawed shrimp cannot tell you anything.
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A live muscle can prove it is fresh right in your hand, because when you touch it, it shuts.
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Nothing else at that price in the whole case comes with its own test.
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Here is how to pick the bag.
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Look at where it is sitting.
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It should be on ice or in the cold case with the net open to the air.
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Mussels breathe.
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A bag knotted inside tight plastic or lying in a pool of melted ice water has been slowly suffocating, and you leave that one where it is.
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Look at the shells.
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They should be wet, glossy, dark, and shut or nearly shut.
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A few with a small gap are normal.
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A bag where a third of them are yawning wide open is a bag that sat too long.
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Pick it up.
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You want weight in your hand and you do not want a rattle.
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A couple of cracked shells is ordinary handling.
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A handful of broken ones means the bag was thrown.
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And broken mussels die and take their neighbors with them.
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And look at the size.
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Bigger is not better here.
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The ones about as long as your thumb, 2 to 2 and 1/2 inches, are the sweet ones, and they cook evenly.
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The giants, the ones as long as your whole hand is wide, are older animal
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1 minute. Black pepper the bacon back in. Pour it over the mussels. What is in that bowl is more or less a clam chowder that took 8 minutes and has 50 pieces of sweet shellfish sitting in it. It is
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smoky, it is creamy, it is salty and sweet at once. And it is the bowl that has ended more arguments about mussels than anything I could ever say across a counter. Make this one first for the doubter in your house. Make the plain
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pot first for yourself. There are five ways people spoil that bag, and all five are easy to stay clear of. The first is the sealed bag. Mussels brought home and left tied in plastic overnight morning, half of them are dead. Bowl, damp towel,
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uh air. The second is the soak. Somebody reads that that clam should sit in water to spit out their sand and does the same with mussels in a sink of tap water.
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Rope-grown mussels have no sand to spit, and an hour in fresh water finishes them. Rinse under the tap, never soak.
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The third is salt. I have already said it, and it is still the one I see most.
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Salt in the pot plus the seawater inside 50 shells gives you a broth nobody can finish. Taste at the very end. You will almost never add any. The fourth is the deep pile. 4 lb in a pot meant for two.
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The bottom layer overcooks while the top layer is still shut. If you are doubling it, use two pots or cook two rounds. A round takes 5 minutes. And the fifth is waiting for every last one to open.
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There are always two or three slow ones. If you keep the pot boiling for them, you turn the other 48 to rubber. When most are open, you are done. A few questions come up every time. My mussels have orange meat and my neighbor's were
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pale. Is something wrong? No. As a rule, the orange ones are female and the pale cream ones are male. They taste the same. Are farmed mussels as good as wild? For a home kitchen, they are better. Wild mussels grow on the bottom
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and on rocks, so they carry grit, barnacles, and thick beards and the sizes are all over the place. Rope grown mussels are clean even and sweeter for their size. This is one of the few places in the seafood case where the
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farmed one is the one to reach for. And the groups that rate seafood for how it is raised put farmed mussels at the top of their lists. I am allergic to shrimp.
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Can I eat these? Do not find out at your stove. Shrimp, crab, and lobster are one family. Mussels, clams, and oysters are a different one and some people who react to the first family are fine with the second and some are not.
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That is a question for your allergist with a test before a single muscle goes in your mouth. What about pregnant women or someone who is ill? Cooked until the shells open wide and the meat is firm, mussels are a cooked food. Raw is a
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different matter and nobody should be eating a muscle raw at home. Can I use what is left over? Pull the meat from the shells, put it in a jar, and pour the broth over it. It keeps 2 days in the refrigerator, warm it
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gently, and it goes over rice or into a soup, or eat the mussels cold with a little vinegar and oil, and never pour that broth away.
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Strained, it is a better seafood stock than anything sold in a carton. Is there a time of year to skip them? Or in the middle of summer, mussels have just spawned and the meat is thinner. They are still good. From October to April,
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they are at their fattest and that is when the bag is the best buy in the store. And should you still buy shrimp at all?
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Of course. If you are putting something on a skewer over a grill, a muscle cannot do that job and a big shrimp can.
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If you are feeding a child who will not touch anything that comes in a shell, buy the shrimp and keep the peace. And for a fried shrimp sandwich, nothing stands in for it. What I am telling you is narrower than never. On an ordinary
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weeknight for for pasta, for a bowl with bread, for a pot in the middle of the table, the shrimp is the habit and the net bag is the better dinner. So, think about that seafood case one more time. The shrimp
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will be where it always is, pink and tidy under the lights with a number on the sign that makes you count heads. And a little way down the ice, there will be a dark net bag that most of the store
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does not see. You know what is in it now. You know to turn the tag over and read one date and you know what that date is doing to the sugar inside those shells. You know they will sit under a
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damp towel until tomorrow and that from the lid going on to the bowls going down is about 5 minutes. If a net bag rides home with you in the coming days, subscribe to Sal Rizzo. It tells me to
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keep walking you past the expensive tray to the thing lying next to it, then leave me one line in the comments. I would like to see the count. Have you ever cooked a bag of live mussels at home, yes or no? And if the answer is
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no, which of the three fears was the one that stopped you? I have a guess and I would like to know if I am right.
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And the day somebody ahead of you in line leans over that net bag and points at the shrimp, let them. Let
Topics:musselsshrimpseafoodbudget cookingsustainable seafoodbuying guidelive shellfishmussel recipesseafood nutritiongrocery shopping
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