/ck/ - Food & Cooking

With lime juice and a good hot sauce is how the mexicans i know eat them and they're delicious.

Sometimes I make a mignonette which is basically a shitload of fresh ground pepper and shallots soaked in red wine vinegar

Cocktail sauce and lemon is of course a classic

>I was gonna try it with lemon juice and s&p
Make sure you leave out the s. that meat is loaded with salt from the sea.

Everyone eats pretty well around our kitchen. The only time I feel like Im stealing is when I take oysters.

>Are all oysters created equally?
Absolutely not. From my experience the tastiest, and most expensive come from the north, and the cheapest come from the south.

> I assume freshness is important but do they age as quickly as seafood that isn't trapped in a shell?
I think you could get by with oysters on ice for 1 week before it gets questionable.

>What's the best way to prepare them?
Raw if theyre fresh enough with mignonette, lemon wedges, and a hot cocktail sauce

>Do they just slide out of the shell or do they have to be scooped out?
You need a special tool to open them. I think it's called an oyster knife. You start at the hinge point to crack open the shell. Once that opens the other side of the shell is being held together by a muscle, so you half to cut through it. Remove the top shell, then cut under that muscle on the underside of it.

On pic related you can see where the muscle had to be cut through to release the top shell

>Are they chewy or soft? What can they be compared to?
The texture seems kind of slimy at first, but once you bite down the oyster gets really meaty. They're very similar to clams or muscles, and if you slather on a lot of cocktail sauce they taste pretty similar to cocktail shrimp.u