Shellfish of the Day: Fresh Live New Zealand Greenlip Mussels

Move over Black Mussels! Greenlip Mussels are here to stay! Yes they are called "Greenli"p because the mussels' lips are green! I like meatier, sweet, and larger mussels and Greenlips are all about those features! Bought some fresh live ones over the weekend and looked forward to cooking them! They are super easy to cook as you just need to wait until all of them have opened up (just like popping popcorn!) to know when they are ready to eat. Usually all of them will be cooked around 8-9 minutes.

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs of Greenlip Mussels
2-3 Celery Sticks
4-6 cloves of Garlic
1 Tomato
1/2 Onion
1 cup White Wine
1 cup of Water
Splash of Olive Oil

Instructions:

1) Discard any mussels that have opened and do not close after touching them. Never want to consume dead mussels before cooking them.
2) Brush and clean very well each mussel from dirt/sand and residue
3) Pull the hair that's sticking out of the mussel by dragging it counter-clockwise. You don't want to eat that part of the mussel. You can either remove it now or remove it later.
4) Heat a pot to medium-high and splash oil to it and add the diced garlic, tomato, onion, and celery.
5) Give it couple minutes for the above to "sweat" and release moisture.

6) You can opt to blend the vegetables if you like or leave it straight up and then pour in the white wine and water and wait for it to boil.
7) Once boiled, throw in the mussels and set timer to about 8-9 minutes. Make sure you don't overcrowd the pot with mussels!

Don't overcrowd like what I did here :)

8) Start shaking the pot periodically to move around the mussels while cooking.
9) Once the mussels open up that's when it's ready to start picking them out from overcooking.

10) After 8-9 minutes and some mussels have still not opened, discard those and do not eat!
11) And voila fresh delicious Greenlip mussels are served!