Tinned mussel recipes

Here are some fast and delicious recipe ideas using tinned mussels.

Mussels On buttered bread
You can’t go wrong with the smoked, spicy or pickled mussels on some buttered crusty bread.

Tinned Mussel salad
Toss the mussels with rocket and cucumber slices, use the escabeche or spiced oil as a dressing and season with salt and pepper.

Mussels with cream cheese
Mussels in punchy, sharp escabeche or the spicy ones are great on crackers with cream cheese. Garnish with chopped parsley or chives or mix the herbs in with the cream cheese.

Spicy mussel pasta

Ingredients:

• 1/2 onion
• 250g of pasta
• 400g of chopped tomatoes
• Two garlic cloves
• Red chilli
• Green chilli
• Salt and pepper
• Sardines in tomato
• Octopus in salsa Gallega
• Spicy mussels
• Black olives
• Basil

This recipe serves two.

1. Bring a pan of salted water to the boil.
2. Meanwhile, finely slice half an onion, melt a knob of butter in a frying pan and sweat the onion on a low heat for about 10 minutes.
3. Add the pasta to the boiling water.
4. To the sweated onion, add two crushed garlic cloves and cook out for about a minute.
5. Add 400g of chopped tomatoes and a red and green chilli, halved and de-seeded if you want less heat. Season with salt and pepper.
6. Once the pasta is ready, drain and add it to the sauce.
7. Now the tinned fish to heat through. We used all three tins: sardines in tomato, octopus in salsa Gallega and drained spicy mussels.
8. Add some halved black olives and garnish with torn basil.

Mussel paella, by Patrick Martinez

Ingredients:

• 1 small onion
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 sweet red pepper
• ½ to 1 tin of tuna
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 tsp salt
• ½ tsp of sweet or hot paprika
• 10 saffron threads
• 130g of paella rice
• 500 ml of water
• 1 tin of mussels
• 3 piquillo peppers
• 10 olives

This recipe serves two.

1. Chop a small onion finely and sweat in the olive oil on a medium heat for about 10 minutes, keep an eye on it and stir it so the onion doesn’t scorch, until it’s soft and sweet.
2. Then add one sweet red pepper, de-seeded and finely chopped, and keep on a medium heat.
3. Meanwhile peel two tomatoes - you can submerge them in boiling water for ten seconds, then into cold, to make peeling them easier - then finely dice the tomatoes until they’re almost like a purée - and set to one side.
4. Add half to one whole tin of drained tuna. Bonito del Norte is good because it imparts lots of flavour into the other ingredients. Keep it on a medium heat and reduce the tomato juices.
5. While it’s reducing, add 1 tsp of salt, ½ tsp of sweet paprika (or hot paprika if you want some heat) and about half a tsp of saffron threads, or to taste.
6. Meanwhile, bring a pan of water to the boil.
7. When the tomato and tuna mix has reduced but there is still some juice add 135g of Brindisa’s standard paella rice and give it a stir for a minute to coat and moisten the rice.
8. Add hot water to the rice, three times the amount as rice.
9. Add half a tin of pickled or spicy mussels, you can just pick them out of the tin; it’s ok if a bit of the marinade or oil goes in the paella.
10. Now is the last time you can stir the paella. Make sure there’s no rice at the bottom of the pan and the ingredients are all blended together. You can add 8 to ten pitted olives at this point if you like.
11. Turn up the heat and let it boil for 5 minutes, then reduce to a simmer for 25 minutes. If you use a paella dish it will heat up quicker than a frying pan. Whichever you use, keep turning it on the hob and moving it up and down so it doesn’t end up overdone in the middle and watery round the edges, and gets the signature golden crispy base.
12. After the paella has simmered for 10 to15 minutes and it’s about half way through the cooking time add the other half of the tin of mussels as a garnish.
13. You can add a blanket of piquillo peppers at this point too so it retains the steam and cooks in a different way. Garnish with more olives and serve.