Mussels fried

MUSSELS FRIED

You can use fresh or frozen mussels.

The fresh ones are tastier but they are not always available in the market.

You can easily find frozen mussels cleaned, in stores with frozen fish, packed in one kilo's packages.

Ingredients

1/2 kilo of mussels without shells

180 grams of olive oil

80 grams of corn oil

200 grams of all purpose flour

Salt to taste

Instructions

Unfreeze mussels putting them in a bowl of water.

Change the water 4 times.

Take each mussel in your hand and open its flesh. You will find something resembling a dark brown tongue.

This tongue has often algae stuck on it.

With kitchen scissors cut the tongue, the seaweed stuck to it and its hard root that lies beneath it.

Then look carefully to see if you can find any pieces of broken shell in the flesh of the mussel.

Most of the mussels are well cleaned, but sometimes you will find small pieces of broken shell. Remove and toss them.

Strain the mussels with a colander and wait until they drain well.

Put little salt on them, so they will not become too salty.                                                

Pour in a nonstick skillet the oil and the corn oil. 

Place the skillet over medium heat and wait until the oil is hot.

First way of frying

Put into the bowl of mussels flour. Mix with your hand well.

Because the mussels have some water, with flour you create thin dough.

This dough surrounds the mussels like a skin.

Get a mussel folded in some dough and drop it into the hot oil.

Sometimes the dough sticks two or three mussels together and forms pancakes with mussels inside.

Drop into the oil these pancakes and cook them until they look light brown.

Once cooked on one side turn them to the other side.   

When browned on both sides take them out of the skillet and put them on a platter lined with paper towels.

The paper towel absorbs the excessive oil.

Second way of frying

There is another way to flour the mussels. 
Put the flour on a shallow dish.

Take each mussel separately and put on the flour.

Turn it in the flour so flour sticks on all its sides.

Shake it to remove the excessive flour and then put it in the hot oil.

In this way in the skillet each mussel is separated from each other.

Mussels do not want much cooking. Once lightly browned on both sides are ready.

In my opinion better taste have the mussels that are cooked in the first way.

So when I cook for my family I always make small mussels pancakes.

But when I have visitors, I prefer to fry them separately because they look better.

 The foto shows mussels cooked in the second way.