Video: Shucking Oysters

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If your eating raw oysters, learn how to use a knife to shuck oysters in this free video about preparing fresh seafood.

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Video Transcript

Another local favorite and a favorite across the country, is our Apalachicola Bay oysters, which is pretty much made this town famous. Apalachicola Bay produces some of the best-tasting oysters in the world, we think. And I'm going to show you how to shuck an oyster. Okay, you've seen it done a million times, I'm sure. It's not real hard, but it is, you have to be careful. You're going to take your oyster knife, with the sharp tip facing up, hold the oyster in the palm of your hand. You're going to insert the tip of the knife right into the hinge, what we call the hinge of the oyster. Usually, you'll be wanting to be wearing a glove, but a glove kind of gets in my way and I've done this a million times and I'll do it a million more times. You're going to work the tip of the knife into the hinge of the oyster. Get it in nice and snug in there. Okay, once you got the tip of your knife wedged into the bill, you're going to twist your wrist in a counterclockwise direction or clockwise, whatever works for you. And the two shells, the top and the bottom, should separate with a little popping noise. Now, I'm lifting the shell off of the oyster, separating the two shells. I'm going to take my knife and I'm going to cut above the oyster itself, into the part of the oyster that's holding the shell together. You can see where it was connected. I'll do the same thing with the bottom half. I'll turn it a little bit so I can reach it better and I'll take the knife and I separate it from the bottom, a little bit of the oyster, from the bottom shell. Now you have an Apalachicola oyster on the half shell, ready to eat. Mm, mm, delicious, good and salty.