English style steamed Mussels - Guinness beer and sliced onions

Today I'm doing my weekly grocery run and the mussels caught my eye. I will always love mussels, as they remind me of summer patio days with a nice bread to dip and pint to wash it down. It was only until one of my friends invited us over for pasta and mussels I learnt how to make these. Who knew how easy this was? You will see, this took me about 20 min - and you get some great restaurant style mussels, fancy!

Mussels are often sold in a bag, about 2 lbs. They are inexpensive, but flavorful little guys hidden in a black shell. Some say mussels are in season from Oct to March. I guess I didn't buy these at the right time. When they are in season, the meat is bigger, fuller, and juicier. Today my bag of mussels are only of medium size - however delicious none-the-less.

What you need:

- 2 lbs of mussels, cleaned and de-bearded. I'll include a note of this at the end.

- 1 cup of your favorite liquid (suggestion: try tomato sauce, white wine, beer, coconut milk, orange juice, apple juice, or soysauce)

- 1 cup of flavorful ingredient (suggestions: try cilantro, chopped tomato, garlic, onions, thai curry paste, olive paste, orange marmalade, or dijon mustard)

- 1 tbsp of olive oil or butter

- salt and pepper to taste

Recipe:

- bring oil, liquids, and dry ingredients to a boil over stove top on high.

- Pour in cleaned mussels, shut the lid and reduce heat to med-high. 

- Steam for 10 min, this should be enough to cook the mussels. 

- Serve hot with crunchy dipping bread

How easy was that?? No effort at all. I like to serve this with some french baguette, or some focaccia bread. At this point, I have to include one of my favorite chef's recipe, chef Michael Smith. His recipes for mussels are trialed and true, here is the link: http://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/steamed-mussels-10-ways/. I have personally made the: English style, Greek, Mediterranean, and Italian. Thai or French would be my next to try. If you end up making one of the styles definitely leave a note and let me know how you like it. Ok now go enjoy the mussels before they get cold!

Note:

- I promised to tell you how to prep the mussels, here we go. Pour the entire bag of mussels in my kitchen sink and let them sit in cold water so it's easy to work on them. 

- I will pick out the broken shell ones (left on the picture above), as they are kind of half dead and we don't want unknown things trapped in the broken shells. The shell looks hard but are actually fragile. Don't toss them around into the pot too hard, they do break quite easily.

- I toss the half open ones since these guys are dead (middle on picture above). Sometimes the mussels need a gentle tap, or a squeeze of the 2 halves and they will close. Just give them a sec before you throw them out.

- Give the shells a good scrub with a kitchen brush to get rid of the dirt and other things that otherwise would end up in your sauce. 

- Take a piece of paper towel, dampen it, and pull the little dangling hairy bits towards the joint of the mussels to get those out (right on above picture). These things are called "beard" and they help the mussels to attach to surfaces as they grow. But they are not at all tasty.

- Often times out of a 2lb bag, I throw out about 5-10 mussels after the above quality control. It's important to take your time and go through these steps so you don't get sick from eating a dead rotten mussel.