Burnt My Fingers

Oyster Shooter.

My local Walmart (and probably yours) has a pint of shucked oysters in its small seafood area for a little over $13. This is a bargain in an era when the price of a happy hour oyster has climbed from $1 to $2 and $3 bivalves are not at all uncommon. The oysters are pasteurized with a sell-by date a couple of weeks in the future, so let’s bring a jar home and decide what to do with them.

My first project will be a booze-less oyster shooter… I don’t mind the vodka, just don’t want it diluting my oyster experience. I start with the ingredients of a home made cocktail sauce: ketchup, horseradish, lemon juice, Tabasco, Worchestershire sauce to taste. Then in goes about 1/3 of the oyster jar and maybe some of the juice. The label says these are “X-Small” but that’s a disclaimer to indicate there is no guarantee of a full size oyster as you’d expect on the half shell. In fact you are likely to get close to a dozen decent sized oysters including a couple of big ones.

You’ll down this beauty in a bite or two, taking the time to roll the oyster around in your mouth and finally chomp into the meat. Intensely satisfying and not particularly bad for you. Are jarred oysters as good as freshly shucked oysters? Anyone who uses cocktail sauce vs mignonette or a grind of black pepper should not ask that question; the sauce overpowers any oyster taste and the oyster adds mainly texture and lubrication.

The rest of the jar is going to become oyster po’ boys, or maybe a component in a fried seafood combo. Oysters are drained in a colander then dipped in beaten egg followed by a roll in an APF/cornmeal mix that has been flavored with celery salt, smoked paprika, salt and a bit of baking powder (or maybe just salt and Old Bay). They go into 375 degree oil and will fry until golden brown, maybe 3 minutes or longer depending on the oyster, till they’re crunchy outside but still moist and tender within. I’ll serve these on a hot dog roll with kewpie mayo and cross-cut pickle slices and add a dash of hot sauce.

We were out of buns so we served our fried oysters atop a green salad. Croutons from the sea!

What else to do with jarred oysters? Koreans add them to kimchi, something I’ve never tried for food safety reasons yet the Koreans I saw do this are still with us. Hangtown fry. Oyster stuffing for your turkey. (The jars used to appear at holiday time in my supermarket for this purpose, but not any longer.) Oysters Rockefeller or Casino, if you’ve been clever enough to save some shells from shucking to heat them in. Oyster stew, of course. Here is a chef’s thread on Reddit with more ideas. (“Amuse bouche fry it with Panko or some freaking shit and make it fancy and March it out to regulars it will make them feel really appreciated and will help out your front of the house.”)

*A side note on oyster sizing: a huge pet peeve is oyster specials where they send out oysters that are too small to be served. This happens in a popular tavern on the same street as my library and is the reason I won’t order oysters there. When we watched world champion Shucker Paddy demonstrate his craft, the teeny-weenies—and you can’t avoid finding some as you open the shells—went into a bucket to be used for chowder or maybe a jar like this one, rather than going out to a customer.