Shuck , slurp , swallow , repeat — that ’s all there is to eating oysters , right ? Wrong . love the ocean delicacy require a modicum of savvy , allot toRowan Jacobsen , founding father of websiteOysteraterand author of the upcoming bookThe Essential Oyster .
To truly appreciate thesaltymollusk , you should hold fast to some basic principle , which Jacobsen limn for the gourmandsover atLucky Peach . While the James Beard Award - winning diarist lists 20 guidelines , here ’s one important convention of thumb : understand your oyster .
Not all oysters taste alike . In general , if they ’re harvested from the Atlantic , the oysters will be briny , and if they ’re from the Pacific , they ’ll be sweet . Flavors become even more nuanced when it issue forth to individual huitre species .
The type of mollusks that are most ordinarily dish up in eating place admit the Eastern huitre , harvested from the Eastern seaboard to the Gulf of Mexico , and the Pacific oyster , which grow from the coastline stretch from Canada to Baja . The Eastern oyster “ tastes like brine and broth with a unfermented - corn finish , ” and the Pacific is more consanguineal to “ cuke or Citrullus vulgaris rind , ” Jacobsen tell . And there are four other minor species , which range from all over the globe and smack like everything from green melon to “ battery terminal traverse in iodine . ”
Like many food , oyster are also seasonal . They consume alga , which bloom in the spring but taper off by wintertime . To plump up for the long , frigid season , oysters gorge themselves on alga in late crepuscule — meaning if you order oyster between November and January , they ’ll be spicy and delectable . hold off a few more months , and the oysters will be skinny . So keep that fact in nous next time you ’re at a huitre cake in April and you ’re disappointed by the fare .
For more handy confidential information on how to make a seafood eating house your huitre , study the full opus atLucky Peach .
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