Tips for Shucking Oysters

Video Transcript

"My name is Brandon Sarkis on behalf of Expert Village. Today, I'm going to show you how to shuck an oyster and how to prepare them a couple of different ways. Sometimes you'll see them and they'll have these little muscles attached to them. Nothing wrong with them, nothing bad about that. They just get in the way usually. This one might be difficult to open as well. There we go. When it comes to opening oysters, you just take your time, don't rush. Because when you hurry, that's when you stab yourself in the hand. Which is never fun at all. Typically, when you do it though, you're going to stab yourself right here and it really, really, really, really hurts. Sometimes you'll find an oyster on an oyster like this. Kind of neat, not very common, but it does happen. And yes, sometimes you will actually find a pearl inside an oyster. Although, typically, since these are farm-raised, short life span, gulf oysters, I wouldn't expect to find one in one of these very easily. And you can also tell how fresh your oyster is by how hard it is to open it. That shows, I guess, how much fight is still left in the oyster. This one was particularly difficult, so this is a good oyster. Alright, so that is how to shuck an oyster. What I'm going to do is take these shells, I'm going to put them over here and I'm going to rinse them off. What you can do is actually run them in the dish machine or whatever. Put them in the oven and bake them for a little while and run it in the dish machine. Clean them off a little because they make great presentations for stuff. You can also keep like a dozen or so around the house just for when you want to do Oysters Rockefeller or if you wanted to do a special oyster dish, they make a great garnish."