How to cook snails correctly?

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Before we delve into the details of how to cook snails, it would be nice to have an idea of what you have to deal with. After all, these are rather unusual inhabitants of green shrubs and reservoirs. Snails differ in body structure, shell shape, as well as their gastronomic features.

This is an unusual food for the inhabitants of Russia, although many peoples have long been eating snails, enjoying their taste and beneficial properties of dietary meat. Not everyone will be able to risk trying a snail, but those who have tried it have never regretted it.

Who are snails and what is their lifestyle

A snail is a mollusk with a hard outer shell, it belongs to the class of gastropods. The body of a mollusc consists of a head, a leg, and an visceral sac. Snails move with the help of a leg, which tends to contract. The leg secretes a lot of mucus for better sliding on various surfaces. The shell of a snail is twisted in a spiral, it contains an internal sac.

Separately, it should be noted the beneficial properties of the mucus secretedsnails. It is a kind of antiseptic, has healing and regenerating properties. It is used to quickly heal wounds and cuts. The miraculous properties are not yet fully understood, but are an undeniable potential for the treatment of diseases in the future. Incredibly, a snail can completely repair a broken shell with slime.

Mollusks usually live in small groups, preferring to crawl out to feed late at night, when no one sees them and they are in relative safety. They mainly eat plants, leaves, young shoots, but do not disdain small worms, they can eat larvae and other representatives of small insects.

Snails also marry at night. Moreover, they do not have a division into male and female, all snails are capable of reproduction. With the help of mucus, partners attach to each other and mate. Snails reproduce quickly, laying many eggs.

Snails often become a big and intrusive problem for gardeners and gardeners. Gathering in groups, they destroy the young shoots of plants of domestic crops. For example, grape snails can eat a huge amount of grape leaves and destroy a vineyard in just a few days.

It is difficult to fight them because of their lightning-fast reproduction. There is nothing left but to cook grape snails.

The French, Spaniards and Italians use snails as the main ingredient, considering them a delicacy. But in our country you can use infood for these little pests, just catch bigger gastropods and figure out how to properly cook snails.

Useful properties of cooked snail meat

Snail meat is rich in protein and B vitamins, so it is an easily digestible product and suitable for dietary nutrition. No matter how you cook snails, their meat will still contain beneficial amino acids.

In addition, it contains trace elements: calcium, magnesium and iron.

In terms of taste, the product is quite specific, but still delicious. Snail meat is soft, but at the same time elastic. It goes well with dry white wine, champagne, but will also work with beer.

In some countries (for example, in the Czech Republic) there are many farms that specialize in breeding snails. In a special area, conditions are being created to provide mollusks with food, as well as protection from predators.

Clam varieties

So, what kinds of snails exist and are they all suitable for cooking? Grape snails are considered the most delicious. They have been eaten since ancient times by both the rich and the poor. They were not a delicacy, but were a natural food for all segments of the population. In order to eat snails, one did not need to have a lot of money. People simply caught them in the thickets of bushes, s alted them and cooked them on a fire, after which they enjoyed the excellent taste of dietary,protein-rich meat.

Experienced "snail eaters" usually do not give advice on how to cook Achatina snails, because even in Africa - the country of origin of these mollusks, they are very rarely eaten. They are large, terrestrial and can reach the size of a human palm. Their meat is tough and tasteless, making Achatina more suitable for breeding as an exotic pet than for eating.

The garden snail is also suitable for food, different from the grape snail in color and shape of the shell, size and habitat. The garden snail can be found in Russia mainly in forest areas in thickets of shrubs. In cities, they are quite rare.

There are snails that live in rivers, they have a darker shell color. Catch them a little harder - these are river snails. How to cook them or land snails, there is no fundamental difference.

How to eat snails

This delicacy is eaten with the help of special devices: escargot tweezers - special tongs for holding the shell firmly, a thin fork with flat teeth to extract the meat. The snail is eaten whole, not cut into pieces. It is permissible to gently drink the resulting juice from the shell. Indeed, before cooking snails, chefs often put a mixture of butter, garlic and herbs in the sink, which gives a unique taste to the dish.

Cleansing the ventricles of snails with a diet

Before cooking garden snails, or any other,it is necessary to cleanse their stomachs by putting them on a special diet.

To do this, they should be placed in a small container (bowl, pan), from which they could not crawl out, after pouring a little flour on the bottom. For 1 kg of snails, no more than 2 tablespoons are needed. This treat will clean the snails well from the inside, after which their meat will get rid of the specific smell and unpleasant aftertaste, and will acquire excellent taste.

On the first day, the snails are given the indicated flour, on the second day its amount is halved. On the third day, the snails are not fed. It is necessary to periodically spray the clams with water so that they do not die, because for cooking they need to be alive.

After this, the snails must be thoroughly rinsed, and the shells cleaned with a brush (you can use an unnecessary toothbrush).

Removing excess mucus with s alt

The next step, before cooking the snails at home, is to remove the mucus from them. To do this, the washed mollusks are placed in a basin, the bottom of which is sprinkled with a thin layer of s alt, for two hours. The snails will start secreting mucus profusely. After that, rinse them again with cold water. Now they are ready for immediate cooking.

Many delicacies are made from snails: soup, caviar seasoned with spicy sauce, stuffed snails stewed in garlic sauce, baked in the oven with basil and much more. But how to cook snails at home, without using complex professional techniques, which any experienced chef is accustomed to, without inventing complex recipes? Simple enoughfry or boil the shellfish, prepare the sauce and enjoy the delicacy.

Cooking fried snails

There is nothing complicated about how to properly cook snails. They can be fried in a regular frying pan. Sprinkle the clams first with s alt and pepper. Add a little vegetable and butter, a few milliliters of dry white wine, place the snails there. Then fry under the lid for 5-7 minutes.

That's it, the fried snails are ready to eat. The meat is surprisingly soft and tender. You should not overexpose the snails on fire, they do not require long heat treatment.

Fried snails: the second way

Before cooking live snails, you need to pack a special oily garlic sauce into the shells, which will give a spicy taste and aroma. To prepare it, you need to mix soft butter, your favorite herbs (parsley, mint, basil), finely chopped garlic in arbitrary proportions.

Stuff the shells with this mixture and send them to the pan, making sure to put them shell side down.

Boiled and lightly fried snails

Another way to cook snails at home is to pre-cook them before frying in a pan. After boiling water in a saucepan, lower the snails there and cook for no more than 5 minutes, and preferably 3 minutes. Fry in butter for 3-4 minutes under a closed lid.

Meat,cooked in this way will also be soft, but more resilient. It is a wonderful appetizer as well as a meal on its own that pairs well with dry wine.

How to cook snails on the grill or in a barbecue

Snails cooked on the grill are considered the most delicious. Smoke gives the taste of meat some smokyness, which makes it more aromatic. To cook snails on the grill, no special preparations are needed.

Pre-s alted and peppered snails are placed on the grate with holes up, and then fried over a fire for 7 minutes. In the process of frying, you can pour lard on the snails, chopped on a skewer and melted over coals.

Don't be scared when the snails begin to "hiss" unpleasantly under the influence of temperature - this is normal, excess moisture just leaves.

Snail meat is especially delicious when dipped in sauce. It goes well with any greens, garlic, mayonnaise, sour cream, soy sauce, butter, dry wine.

Whatever method you choose to cook snails, you must remember an important rule: do not overcook them on fire, because of this the meat can become tough and not so tasty. And although in our country not everyone is ready for such taste experiments, but for those who have managed to appreciate snail dishes, this is the best delicacy and delicacy.