Mussels - Aunt Anna and the sweets of the sea

Writer: Anna Nilsson Spets

Belgium's national dish is Moules-frites, steamed mussels with pommes frittes, mayonnaise or cold mussel sauce.

Here at home we eat mussels like Swedes eat meatballs, the average Belgian eats 2.5kg a year. Now I'm neither Belgian nor average, so I think it's more like 10 kilos per year ...

As the old saying goes, mussels are available every month that has an R in the name, but that used to have to do with refrigeration, now mussels are available more or less all year round.

For many, many millions of years, mussels have been present in the world's waters; fresh, brackish and salt.

Eating them has been done for thousands of years, and in the 16th century they figured out that they could be grown too, making harvesting easier.

Mussels are a fascinating genus with around 2000 different species, many of which are completely unknown on the dinner table.

Here in Belgium we also eat mussels other than blue mussels, we also like to pick at various shells and love to slurp up oysters. Yum.

How does a mussel come into being, well, you might wonder, but it's not that weird actually. At the age of one year, the mussel becomes sexually mature, the male mussels release their milk, the female mussel rum. Fertilisation takes place and after a few days larvae develop and float around in the water.

After a few weeks of swimming, they settle on stones, rocks or piles. Mussels don't always stay in the same place, they move through the waves for example.

A mussel actually has a little foot as well, believe it or not, they can move quite fast with it. When the mussel is at least 18 months old, it is ready for harvesting and consumption.

So how do you grow and harvest? There are two options, rope culture or seabed culture. Rope culture is a hanging culture, 5-6 metres of coarse ropes are attached to the bottom, the fertilised mussel larvae attach themselves to the ropes.

Mussels that have grown on the seabed are scraped up by machine and unfortunately destroy part of the bottom.

The harvest then goes to auction, it is sold by size, five different classes.

It is then sorted and packed in the large factories in, for example Yerseke at the Dutch border and transported to the rest of the world.

Can I take mussels from the beach? Answer yes, you can bring mussels that you can pick or rake together, for fishing from a boat with towed gear you need a permit. 

Picking beautiful mussel and seashells is prohibited in some countries.

The mussel is NOT a crustacean, even though it has two shells joined by a rubber band-like ligament. Bivalve molluscs are the genus that the mussel shares with, for example, the oyster, sea urchin and octopus.

Mussels feed on plankton, which they ingest by filtering the water. It's also really climate-smart - one kilo of mussels filters 6000 litres of water per hour, helping to combat eutrophication and high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water.

Mussels are also extremely healthy, containing lots of protein, vitamins and minerals. It's not for nothing that we've been eating them since the Stone Age.

What do I do? Like Kajsa Warg, I take what I can get. There are as many mussel recipes as there are recipes for pea soup, for example. Mussels with broken shells go straight into the rubbish, the same way for mussels with open shells before cooking.

It is also important to boil/steam the mussels thoroughly, at least 1.5 minutes, the shells should open.

For the luxury eater there are beautiful utensils, we ordinary people use an empty double mussel shell as cutlery.

If you come to visit us, we often serve mussels!

And no, I don't keep quiet like the clam, I say more clams to the people!