In this video, Chef Anjana Shanker of the Modernist Cuisine Cooking Lab in Bellevue, Washington shows me how to shuck oysters the easy way – with liquid nitrogen:
Okay, so maybe not the “everyman” method of shucking, but it sure is efficient. All you do is pop them in liquid nitrogen for 15 seconds (small batches) and then let them sit on a tray for 30 minutes (keep them flat so all the juice/liquor inside doesn’t spill). They don’t open miraculously all the way and expose the oyster inside, but they do pop. So all you have to do is pull the top the rest of the way off and scrape a knife along the bottom and top to the remove the oyster from the shell like normal.
Boy I wish Decca77 had a container of liquid nitrogen handy when I went there last winter for their all-you-can-shuck oyster dinner. I was so bad that the servers started helping me shuck at the buffet. Turns out I really, well, s(h)uck. Now, where to order liquid nitrogen…maybe this is not so practical…does it come in the Molecule-R mini-molecular gastronomer wannabe kit?
The cooking lab used these oysters in this dish:
Cryo-shucked oysters, sunchoke oyster cream and pickled rose petals
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