Ari Kolender knows oysters. His two seafood restaurants — Found Oyster in East Hollywood and Queen’s Raw Bar & Grill in Eagle Rock — serve tens of thousands of oysters a week. Between them they’ve sold well over a million oysters, splayed in platters over ice, tucked into towers of seafood, served raw, grilled or fried (even occasionally buffalo-fried).
So if you want to learn how to shuck oysters properly, who better to ask than Kolender?
Yes, “the process is intimidating,” says Kolender. “You have a sharp knife. You have something fighting against you. Do I use a glove? Do I use a towel? All this stuff. How do I get this hinge to open?
“It’s not easy, but if you know what you’re looking for, it can be.”
The quality of the shuck is important, Kolender says. He’s standing in the L.A. Times’ test kitchen, equipped with an oyster knife and thick kitchen towel, about to open a couple of dozen Hayes (West Coast) and Norumbega (East Coast) oysters.
“Everyone thinks they should dig in with as much force as possible,” he says. “It’s not about pressure, it’s about leverage. You’re trying to separate these two shells that open naturally.”
Here are Kolender’s tips for perfectly shucking oysters:
Firstly, look for fresh and clean oysters. Always ask when they were harvested. “They can live a really long time, but they start to lose their infrastructure,” or their liquid, after a week.
You want closed oysters. If an oyster is open and stays open, it’s dead and should be discarded. If its liquor has spilled onto other oysters, just rinse them off.
OK, let’s shuck.
Consider the anatomy of the oyster.
An oyster usually has a cupped side and a flat side. The cup of the oyster should be facing down.
The hinged side of the oyster comes to a point in a “V.” The purpose here is to pry open the hinge, then free the oyster meat from the top and bottom shell, which is connected by its adductor muscle.
Use a kitchen towel to hold your oyster. “It’s the safest way to be,” Kolender says.
Put the kitchen towel flat on a surface. Though Kolender prefers to hold the towel in his hand, he says placing it on the counter — with the oyster resting on it — is the best way for beginners to get into the physics of shucking.
Make sure the oyster’s hinge is facing you. “Your knife is designed to fit into a hinge very well,” he says. The hinge might not be in the exact same place every time. Run your knife along the “V”-shaped end of the oyster, and “it will tell you where it needs to be. Determine how it feels comfortable.”
Open the hinge. Press down on the oyster to keep it still, with a tiny bit of pressure and then move the knife in a rocking “U” motion along the hinge. That creates friction and leverage between the top shell and bottom shell, which opens it up.
Release the adductor muscle that attaches the meat to the shell. It goes straight through the top and bottom of the oyster. Your job is to release the oyster from the top and bottom shell and leave it there for serving.
So you’re going to run the tip of the knife down the side of the shell so that you can open it slightly — enough that you can see the oyster and identify its adductor muscle. “This is not your chef knife. You’re not slicing the meat off of the shell. You’re actually pushing the meat off of the shell.” So keep the knife against the top of the shell and push to scrape the meat off. It’s surgery; it’s just the tip of the knife you need. The top of the shell should come away.
The same process applies to removing the adductor muscle away from the bottom shell. “I like to use my thumb as a backboard to hold the oyster in place.” Use the tip of your knife to follow the shape of the cupped part of the oyster, holding the knife against the shell to free the meat.
Extra tips: Remember to clean your knife as you go. And wipe any debris away from the shell that holds the oyster.
Serve the oysters flat on ice. Kolender serves them on pebble ice, because “it’s nice and light” and you can really nuzzle your oysters into the ice so they stay flat, not tilted, so none of their liquid spills out. Some fast food restaurants such as Chick-Fil-A and Sonic will sell you pebble ice, he notes. You can use any kind of ice. “The best thing to do with oysters is keep them cold.”
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