Have You ever Shucked an Oyster?

Watch and Learn just How to Do It!

If you love eating oysters and want to learn how to shuck oysters at home, don’t let the stories put you off. Although shucking oysters requires some effort, it takes less muscle than it does skill. With a little knowledge about oyster anatomy, a good knife and some way to protect your hands from slips or the oyster shell itself, you’ll quickly take fresh oysters from shelled to shucked like a pro.

Buying Live Oysters
When you’re buying live oysters, you want to make sure that you’re buying fresh oysters. Fresh oysters should smell clean and briny, like the sea. Any other odors are an indication that the oysters are beginning to or have spoiled. Oregon Seafood gets very fresh Oysters every week and is an excellent source for high quality live oysters.

Look for oysters with tightly closed shells. Healthy, live oysters don’t readily make themselves vulnerable to predators. If you see oysters with partially opened shells, tap them. If the shells snap shut immediately, the oyster is okay. If not, the oyster has either died or is the process of dying. If you’re buying oysters in bulk, ask the fishmonger if you can pop an oyster or two open to check the liquor for freshness.

Oregon Seafood is located: 1167 SE Tualatin Valley Hwy. Hillsboro, Oregon 97123 503-693-7222
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North Or South Puget Sound Oysters Are Best.

Get Your Live Oysters At Oregon Seafood.

South Puget Sound, with its gentle beaches, is ready-made for oyster farming. North Puget Sound is not. The island coves to the north are deep and rocky, so it’s no surprise that most of Washington’s suspended-culture operations are concentrated in this area. With fewer land influences, the oysters from North Puget Sound tend to be brinier than those of the South Sound and lighter flavored—more cucumber than smoke.

Penn Cove Selects have something of a stranglehold on the Most Beautiful Oyster competition. Three times in the past several years they have won. The 2006 competition was such a slam-dunk that it was almost embarrassing for the other oysters. One plump Penn Cove Select sat there in its perfect filigreed shell, simply vibrating with class and vitality. It mopped the stage with the other fourteen entrants and received a perfect score from many judges. Beach-cultured in Samish Bay, then hung in the deep waters of Whidbey Island’s Penn Cove to purge, Penn Cove Selects are one of the quintessential Northwest oysters, eternally popular. They always have a nice size—four inches or so—gray-green shells, and the crunchy freshness of a salted cucumber.

The nonprofit Community Oyster Farm has been raising oysters in Drayton Harbor, a horseshoe of tide flats straddling the Washington/British Columbia border, since 2001. The goal is to improve water quality in the harbor, using proceeds from the oyster farm to fund the programs. It’s a perfect symbiosis, and it doesn’t hurt that the oysters are plump, sweet, and savory.

A Pacific oyster grown in the immaculate waters of Orcas Island, between Washington and British Columbia. Out there, they are practically immune to the vibrio and red tide attacks that affect mainland Washington oysters. Grown in bags on long lines, Judd Coves have pretty shells with purple and green swirls, and creamy white flesh contrasting with a precise black mantle. They are mild and vegetal in flavor, only slightly salty, and easy to eat.

Nake Roy’s Beach, A terrific oyster fruity and rich, with a nose that mixes rhubarb, spinach, and river humus. The shell has a deep, pearly interior and frills so extreme you wonder how the thing closes. The resemblance to a Penn Cove Select is strong, and since both oysters come from Samish Bay, it’s tempting to believe that something about Samish Bay’s sandy shores and windward orientation produces oysters with amazing, wavy shells. But forget the oyster; what about Naked Roy? He was a character known for staking out a particular section of sand on Samish Bay and working on his full-body tan. He has been immortalized in the unofficial name of the beach and now the oyster.

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Zesty Oysters From The Puget Sound.

Live Oysters From Oregon Seafood.

Puget Sound reaches into Washington State like an arm dipping into a barrel. Its upper arm abuts Seattle, its elbow bends at Tacoma, and at Olympia it spreads five fingers into the land. Those five long, narrow inlets—Hammersley, Little Skookum, Totten, Eld, and Budd—comprise some of the most famous oyster appellations in the Northwest.

Budd reaches directly into downtown Olympia and is closed to shell-fishing, but the other four are thick with amazingly fast-growing oysters and clams. Each inlet has its distinctions, but they all contribute that characteristic South Sound flavor—full, rich, intense, more sweet than salty, a hint of cooked greens or seaweed, bordering on musky. It’s like a sea version of collards with pork fat.

An extraordinary two hundred miles from the open sea, the South Sound has relatively low salinity; the sea is less of a factor. After navigating all that coastline, the water that reaches the South Sound has experienced countless land influences. It’s also nutrient-rich, thus algae-rich. Rivers, tidal zones, and mudflats each add their own algae-mineral cocktail to the mix.

Salmon push up those inlets in fall, flooding them with nutrients when they die. If Eastern oysters smell like wet rocks at low tide, South Sound oysters smell like wet earth at low tide. It’s an acquired taste. But those who acquire it consider milder oysters too boring. They toast each others arch taste with a musky Pinot Gris and never look back.

Just a few miles of fir forest separate Hood Canal from Puget Sound, but geologically they are worlds apart. South Puget Sound is a land of gentle terrain and shallow inlets. Hood Canal, on the other hand, is steep and deep: steep mountains above, deep waters below. It’s a genuine glacier-carved fjord, the only one in the continental United States. Oysters adore Hood Canal.

The water is kept brackish, cold, and oxygenated by the Olympic rivers. Even more important, the glacier left behind a gravelly till, quite unlike the muddy substrate that dominates Puget Sound. Firm river deltas line the canal, every one of them laced with brackish sloughs and thick with oysters. The classic Hood Canal flavor is very different from that of southern Puget Sound; more lettuce and lemon zest, saltier, less sweet, and very firm for a Pacific. Oregon Seafood keep these oyster Live in their Saltwater Sea Tanks.