Published November 1, 1996.
For a steamed mussels recipe that was quick, flavorful, and grit-free, we began with rope-cultured and Great Eastern bottom mussels (a widely available variety), which we found to be the cleanest. Garlic in the broth balanced and enriched the flavor of the mussels. Simmering the broth for a few minutes before adding the mussels beefed up the flavor. When developing our steamed mussels recipe, we found that larger mussels need to cook a few minutes after they open to firm up, but that didn’t create any difficulty for us. It all evened out if we simply cooked them until all the mussels opened.
This recipe is adapted from Jim Peterson’s Fish and Shellfish (Morrow, 1996). Serve these tomato-bathed mussels over one pound of cooked, drained cappellini.
Dear Friend,
These days, it’s pretty easy to get free recipes on the Internet. I’m sure a search for “roast chicken recipe” will turn up thousands and thousands. But, as with so much on the web, you should tread lightly if you don’t know the source.
In America’s Test Kitchen, our motto is, “Recipes that Work,” and our mission is to be your trusted source for recipes that work every time you use them. Our test cooks spend their days obsessively testing recipes until they offer consistently great results. As we like to say here, “We make the mistakes so you don’t have to.”
CooksIllustrated.com is the only place you can find not only 20 years' worth of our foolproof recipes, but also objective ratings of cookware, and blind taste tests for hundreds of everyday supermarket ingredients (hey, without the proper ingredients and equipment you can still run into problems — no matter how good the recipe).
Let me make a simple, no-nonsense offer. Try out our website FREE for a 14-Day, No-Hassle Trial Offer. I’m pretty confident that CooksIllustrated.com will quickly become an invaluable resource for everything from quick, weeknight suppers to huge, holiday feasts for family and friends.
Thanks for your consideration,
Christopher Kimball
Founder and Publisher
