I am not really a purist when it comes to shucking oysters. As many of you who have seen my how-to shucking video (which if you haven't seen it, is here) know already, I can pretty much take my "essentials" anywhere- a knife, a glove, a board, a rag and some oysters. The only thing I've ever really been picky about is the knife- which I prefer to be a hinge knife.

However, thanks to a local company, Wye River Provisioners, that might change. They sent me a little package over the holidays, and inside was a glove, a knife, and a pretty little shucking board- the perfect oyster shucking kit.

Once I had unpacked everything from its tidy little bag, it gathered a little dust over the holidays while I ate oysters pretty much everywhere but home. However, around the time I got back from France I found I had a real hankering for local oysters- plus I had my fancy new oyster knives from Paris to test. So, while I was at it, I tried out my new shucking kit.

Friends, my normal shucking block is a piece of driftwood I picked up at Eastern Neck Island. It is not fancy. This shucking board was on a whole new level. It is canted to raise the oyster up for a better shucking angle, the wood is beautifully grained and dove-tail joined, and there's even an oyster-shaped divot in the middle. Compared to my driftwood board, it is seriously cadillac.

The result? A prettily-shucked oyster, and a nice presentation- especially since the board wasn't dripping oyster liquor all over the place.

All in all, I have to give Wye River Provisioners props for seriously elevating a normally-overlooked oyster essential. Plus, the business was started by two St. Mary's College of Maryland grads, from a shop in Queenstown on Maryland's Eastern Shore, so it means you can shop local (or at least, know what you're getting is the real Chesapeake deal).

Want to get your own board? Check out the Wye River Provisioners website or their Etsy shop here

Visiting Paris was one of the most sensual experiences of my life, in the purest sense of the word. The city is visually arresting, laced with a soundtrack of street musicians, overlaid with savory smells escaping from corner bistros, and as personal as the feel of a thick silk scarf, knotted at your throat. So it should hardly be a surprise that the French give oysters the same treatment. Presentation, freshness of the shellfish, accompanying traditional sides, even down to the precise art of pairing wines with your oysters— all is artfully considered. It's a treat to be an oyster lover in France. Here, achieving nirvana on the half shell is as easy- especially if you know what you're asking for.

In French, oysters are called 'huitres' (whee-trah). They are a seasonal treat, and much like in the Chesapeake, they follow the "R" month rule- oysters are available in the coldest months of the year, from September to April. They are especially popular around the Christmas holidays.

Unlike the States, however, they diverge in how those winter oysters are consumed. While back at home you might be used to oyster stew, oysters Rockefeller and oyster fritters to name a few, here pretty much all oysters are consumed raw. The French feel (and I agree) that the delicate, complex flavor of oysters is best enjoyed as unvarnished and as fresh as possible. Cooking makes oysters a vehicle for other stuff, which is fine- but if you want to truly savor an oyster, you should do it on the half shell.

So, finding an oyster place isn't hard. Generally, most bistros actually display their shellfish outside as a way to entice passerby to stop and suck down a few dozen. Along with prawns, scallops, lobsters and other maritime treats, oysters are gorgeously arrayed along with their tags and shipping labels. This is one of the ways that the French go about trumpeting the freshness of their seafood. As I mentioned, they believe this is paramount- and it is the right of every consumer to explicitly demand to know the date, location, and particulars of their shellfish.

Once you've found a cozy corner cafe of France to occupy for an hour or two (preferably with a good view of the passerby) with a few dozen oysters, consider the menu. French oysters are numbered 0-5, with 0 being the largest oysters and 5 being the smallest. Price-wise, it generally follows that the smallest oysters, straight from the sea are the cheapest, known as 'fines.' Next comes 'speciales,' then 'fine de claires' and finally 'speciales de claires.' The very best are 'pousse en claire.' Anything with 'claire' in the name has been finished in a salt water pond, and the longer the oyster has been in the pond, the better it is considered and the price will rise accordingly. My recommendation is to go with a standard size (I found oysters considered a '3' to be about standard US 3.5 inches), and get a variety of quality oysters- maybe 4 or 2 of each, and see which kinds you like the best.

French oysters are not usually served with many condiments. Even a migonette is rare. Usually, you get bread, butter, and a half a lemon. Eschewing even the lemon will gain you appreciative looks from the raw bar attendant. As you attack the oysters, one of the first things you'll notice is that the oyster is still attached to the shell. "Does that guy actually know what he's doing??" you'll think, and in the States, that would be the case. Here, the French only cut the top adductor muscle (the firm flesh inside the oyster that opens and closes the shell), not the bottom. This, they believe, keeps the oyster alive longer, guaranteeing freshness for the consumer. Usually, they give you a sharp knife to do the job yourself. It is considered good form to use it to scrape every bit of adductor off and eat it all.

Of course, you need a good wine to wash all these oysters down with- and for the French, this too, is a thoughtfully-considered process. Dry whites are considered to be the only appropriate pairing. A Sauvignon Blanc is good, a Sancerre is better, a Pouilly Fume is great, and a Chablis is awesome. Order it by the verre (glass, pronounced VER) or the pichet (carafe, pronounced pee-chay) and you're all set.

Now, if you really want to next-level your oyster experience in France, order a 'plateau des fruits de mer' (a seafood tower) and prepare yourself for the most beautiful, delicious, diverse shellfish experience outside of a living oyster reef. Oh, and come hungry. When I worked up the nerve to order myself the much fabled seafood tower, a bed of crushed ice was the setting for a panoply of maritime wonders that would tempt a mermaid- 3 kinds of oysters (including the famous "flats"- edulis native oysters), langoustines, whelks, prawns, an entire crayfish, crab legs, snails, and various other kinds of creatures I didn't even know how to describe. The tower bristled with different implements designed to attack the defenses of each particular species. Needless to say, the seafood tower was a memorable meal of epic proportions- perhaps the closest I've ever gotten to channeling, say, a narwhal. It was incredible!

So, that's it folks. If you are lucky enough to take a trip to France, treat yourself while you're there to one of the finest oyster experiences and the most elevated oyster culture in the world. The oysters are superb, and it is certainly worth incurring a little jet lag and a hefty l'addition (the check) in order to check French huitres off your bucket list.

So, followers of the "Chesapeake Oysters" page may have seen the photo above recently, taken during my trip to Paris. Of course, as an 'ostreaphile' (or oyster connoisseur), I can't help myself- when I travel, oysters mysteriously seem to get included on my itinerary- whether it's consuming them by the dozen or peppering raw bar staff with questions about their products. Oyster related tools are another fun thing I like to explore. For every culture that loves oysters, they have usually developed regional ways of opening, serving and eating shellfish. That also means cool and creative oyster knives (which also make easy to pack, functional souvenirs to impress your friends with later).

A quick survey on facebook indicated that most people thought the blue knife to be the sturdiest-looking, with the black knife following closely behind. The wooden-handled knife from Paris' classic chef-supply store, Dehillerin, was viewed by one skeptical reader as "a trip to the emergency room," so, not a great vote of confidence there.

So, once home from Paris, I was excited to get a couple dozen oysters and try them out. After a few attempts (and no trips to the hospital, thankfully), here's the results:

First was the Deglon. I used it at the hinge and was first struck by how petite the knife was. Both the blade and the handle were quite small- much smaller than my regular go-to oyster knives. However, it felt sturdy and worked well to deftly open the oyster, with almost no tearing to the oyster's meat. I wasn't worried about the tip breaking or anything, and I felt that it would stand up to a good amount of use. Overall, it was a great little knife, and the handle is a little sexy, too.

Next, I tried the generic shucking knife. Like the Deglon, it was much smaller than the typical American shucking knives I tend to use- the handle was smaller and the blade was shorter (and much more pointy!). Unlike the Deglon, it did feel insubstantial and as one commenter pointed out, the fragile-looking pointiness of the blade made me a little nervous to attack the hinge with my customary gusto. So, before I went for it, I made sure my shucking glove was ready. The result was okay. It was a decent, clean shuck with no damage to the oyster, but it took longer than usual. I considered doing the French side-shuck, but that's not my favored approach so I scrapped it. Overall, this was an adequate knife. Not a disaster, and certainly it worked well enough, but I wasn't in love. It wasn't oyster art.

Finally, I got to the final knife of the evening- the shucking knife from the iconic E. Dehillerin cooking store. It is actually made for the store as its store-brand staple, so I had high hopes for this beautifully crafted oyster knife. However, those hopes were dashed as I attempted to shuck my first oyster. The blade runs all the way through the handle, yet it still felt like I was going to break it at any moment at the hinge. Figuring it was user error, I headed around to the side, French-style. That produced the oyster you see above- a blendered, destroyed mess. The knife felt insubstantial and frankly didn't navigate the interior of the oyster shell well at all. It's a shame since the knife is so pretty, but perhaps we can find some use for it at my house paring apples or something.

The final verdict? The Deglon was the hands-down winner. It was inexpensive, sturdy, and fun to use, and felt different enough from my American-made knives that it warranted its 'souvenir' status. Even better is that you don't have to go to France to get one! You can buy one
here on Amazon for the very reasonable price of $13, which is approximately $870 less than a round-trip flight to Paris (although then you miss out on savoring the amazing French oysters, which in my mind, are truly a priceless life experience).

While in America it's the season to be merry, in Paris, that merriment isn't found under a tree- it's found inside an oyster's shell. Here, deep winter means oysters- the traditional food of Christmas and New Year's Eve. In fact, almost 50% of the 130,000 tons of oysters annually produced in France are eaten over the holiday season, and all of those oysters are raw. Oyster vendors are all over the Paris streets, and every bistro seems to have scores of patrons sitting in outside in winter coats, savoring their briny, freshly-shucked shellfish with copious quantities of dry white wine.

Much of the American shellfish consumerism has echoes of the French tradition. Today, the Chesapeake is just beginning to differentiate between oysters from different regions and to brand each variety as unique. For the French, distinguishing the different properties of 'merroir' is old news. They are oyster lovers, going all the way back to the first oyster connoisseurs, the Romans, whose oyster culture and obsession were as much a part of the Empire's legacy as viticulture and wine. The Romans conquered the Gallic Celts and set about sampling their shellfish- and when possible, shipped them back to Rome for the luxury seafood market.  As with the English oyster tradition that I explored in Chesapeake Oysters, the Romans helped the French recognize the rare treat they had abounding in their vast coastline.

The oysters the Romans favored and that later became an essential part of the French diet in the 19th century are not the same species of oysters modern Parisians enjoy, by and large. The native Crassostrea edulis- wide, flat, round and with a taste like licking a copper penny- were decimated by mysterious diseases in the 1920's when oyster science was still in its infancy, and a different species, Crassostrea angulata or the 'Portuguese oyster,' was introduced to continue to support the market. The Portuguese oyster was widely popular (and is still invokes much oyster nostalgia today amongst those who remember its apparently unparalleled flavor) until the 1960's and 1970's, when two diseases, Marteilia refringens and Bonamia ostrae destroyed the oyster stocks. By the late 1970's, France's oyster production had declined from 20,000 tons to only 2,000 tons a year. In response, the French embraced a non-native species- Crassostrea gigas or the "creuse" oyster- as part of the state's "Resur" plan. The introduced oysters flourished where the angulata had perished, and today gigas oysters are now ubiquitous in the country's oyster regions- representing 90% of France's annual oyster production. Edulis varieties are still produced, though they are much more rare, and as you might guess, significantly more expensive than the common gigas varieties.

All this history and context said, though, oysters are meant to be eaten- and to help guide consumers along the way, France has developed a framework for its oyster growers, differentiating by size and by intensity of cultivation. The sizing is simple- oyster range between a size 5 at the smallest and a size 0 at the largest. Unlike the States, where plenty of folks will fork over a premium for a Kumamoto the size of a squirrel's ear (many women in particular disdain large oysters- take that as you will), here bigger oysters cost more. It makes sense in terms of sheer volume, so those who prefer smaller oyster should take note- France will treat you right!

The other method of differentiation between oysters has to do with production quality. France has seven different oyster production zones that are treated much like wine appellations on land. Oysters from these regions, ranging from Normandy in the north to the Thau lagoon in the Mediterranean, all have specific flavor profiles reflecting the salinity, tidal activity, and algal concentration of the local environment. Also, depending on location, oysters might be raised in bags, on ropes, or through extensive culture (scattered on the bottom of the sea). However, just raising oysters to market maturation is not considered enough. Unlike in the United States, where a strong taste of the sea is preferred, the French like their oysters fat and sweet. To achieve this, oysters are finished in man-made salt-water ponds known as 'claires.' These ponds are infused with pulses of freshwater, and their high algal content allows oysters transferred from the ocean to fatten and to take on unique, complex flavor profiles. The longer oysters are finished in claires, the more their taste matures and the fleshier they become.

Often, middlemen will buy oysters from regions like Normandy and Brittany known to produce meaty shellfish, and transfer them to claires for finishing, selling the final product at a higher profit. These claire oysters are differentiated by how much volume their meat takes up within the oyster shell. The longer they've been in a claire, the more algae they've eaten and the fatter they are. Salt water oysters, known as 'fines' are the least fat, and 'speciales' are the next weighty. 'Fine de claire' is reserved for claire-finished oysters of the next highest quality, while 'speciale de claires,' and 'pousses' move up the scale to 'perles' at the pinnacle.

All in all, it is a rigorous and intricate system developed over 120 years. Oysters here are strictly cultivated- ultimately a boon for the consumer. All this information is honestly quite more than most oyster eaters are interested in, so in my following post, I'll tackle the French oyster CliffNotes. What to choose? Which oysters are good? How are they served? What qualities define a 'good' French oyster? What is the French custom for eating them? What wine should I order to pair them with?

Check back later this week for your guide to ordering and enjoying oysters like a pro in France! In the meantime, as the French say, Bon Annee (Happy New Year) and more importantly, bon appetit!

Throughout the Chesapeake, where the mixture of salt and fresh water is just right, thin wafers are tumbled by the tide. Faded remnants of once robust oyster beds, these are middens- oyster shell beaches testament to the Chesapeake's past oyster populations. Made up of discarded oyster shells, middens still exist where often no oysters thrive today. Beach glass and pebbles are mixed into the softly crumbling oyster shells, and often beachcombers will find arrowheads or pottery and other detritus from the people that came down to the shore, ate oysters here, and left. Middens can be hundreds or even thousands of years old. Some are colonial, many are pre-colonization remnants of Indian winter camps. All are ghosts of a sort, haunting our contemporary landscape with reminders of the winter feasts savored, centuries ago.

I love middens, but then again, I love to feel like I am cheek-to-jowl with the past. The experience of almost-tangible time travel is addictive. Middens powerfully convey that feeling, existing along Chesapeake tributaries too fresh, too sedimented, or too degraded to support the delicate balance of an oyster colony. HERE, they say, is what this Bay used to be like. You could fill your belly on an oyster bar where today there's a marina, a road, an empty stretch of cornfield, the terminus to an overgrown trail. Oyster middens convey a subsistence past where today only a convenience culture persists. Like old paint peeling off a wall, middens reveal history hidden just below the surface- faded, but persistent, and beautiful.

Oysters- wet, maybe a little mucosal- don't seem like exactly the most appetizing food to promote, right?  Au contraire! Oyster packers and the lithographers working for them during Baltimore's golden era of oystering came up with endlessly creative solutions to solve the oyster's little 'image problem.' From humorous cartoons like the snooty oyster bar patron on Grebb's trade card above, to beautiful ladies, babies and puppies, pretty much any strategy was used to move Baltimore oysters.

These trade cards were used like a combination of a modern business card and a flyer. Used by tradesmen, they were handed out widely to restaurants, grocers, and oyster bars as a way to promote their brands. Usually, the reverse side would have particulars about the cost of oysters in bulk or the name and contact information of the brand representative.

Oyster packers had more than one kind of oysters to sell- steamed (bulk), canned, or oysters in the shell. Often, processors switched to packing fruits or vegetables in the summer when oysters were out of season, so Louis Grebb is offering both.

These oyster trade cards utilized the new printing technique of lithography, and evolved at the same time as their far more famous relative, baseball trade cards. Several lithography firms were working in Baltimore by this era, the most famous of which was A. Hoen and Company- a lithographer that printed maps, tobacco labels, sheet music, posters, and oyster trade cards during the end of the the 19th century. A. Hoen's lithographic style, and that of many of their competitors, was greatly influenced by the style of political or satirical cartoons popular in magazines during the late 19th century. However, that meant that often oyster trade cards included imagery considered humorous by the Victorians that today reads as inappropriate or just racist.

Like oyster cans, brightly printed, lively trade cards are highly collectible today. Fans value their whimsical graphics but also their glimpse into a part of the Chesapeake's bygone Oyster Boom, when a bushel of oysters cost $3,  the Bay's seemingly endless oyster bounty supportedalmost 20% of the city's population, and the wonders of marketing were transforming oysters from quotidian part of the diet to Chesapeake brain food.

Oystering in the 19th century was a nasty business. Shellfish harvests were highly competitive, prices were high, and little heed was paid to harvesting regulations (or the Oyster Navy enforcing them). People killed over access to oysters and the money they represented, and whether that meant a oysterman murdering an immigrant crewmember or a tonger gunning down a rival skipjack captain, anarchy prevailed. By the late 1800's, oyster poaching and general lawlessness was rampant on the Bay's byways- all to feed the ceaseless demand of the oyster packinghouses in Baltimore, Crisfield, Solomons, and Norfolk. In each city, hundreds of packinghouses competed for dock space and consumer adoration, turning out hundreds of thousands of cans from each brand every year. Transported by rail, these cans of Chesapeake oysters brought the brackish taste of the Bay to hungry Americans across the country, in communities thousands of miles away from the coast.

Oyster packinghouses, although far less likely to incite murder, were another often unsavory link in the processing chain that moved oyster from the Bay to markets across the country. As the image above shows, these were wet, dark, cold places where oysters were shucked, packed and shipped by an immigrant or African-American workforce. An industrial report in 1886 described the workers in one of Baltimore's 45 packinghouses: " The oyster shuckers are a vert hard working, good-tempered- if not very clean- community; their morals are not very strict, if their conversation is a criterion, and the standards of intelligence is certainly low." The reporter went on to state the average wage for one of these maligned workers- a paltry 5 cents per can.

Crisfield, Maryland's packinghouses were largely supplied by African-American labor, unlike Baltimore, where German and Irish immigrants made up the majority of the workforce. Many of these shuckers, washers, blowers, measurers, and fillers were once slaves who now toiled for nominal wages at the town's 16 different packinghouses. In 1880, one report estimated that out of 678 employees working for oyster packers in Crisfield, 500 of those were African-American. Together, these shuckers had packed 427,270 bushels of oysters in a single year.

Children frequently worked alongside their parents in the gritty, steamy packinghouses, shucking oysters while standing on drifts of slowly rotting shells. It was a frequent sight in the era prior to child labor laws, and a reminder that like New England's mills or West Virginia's coal mines, oyster packinghouses were one part of the vast Industrial Revolution that ground along on human cogs. Indeed, Thomas Kensett, one of the founders of Baltimore's oyster canning industry, proudly stated in 1869, "Were it not for the shucking of oysters, many children, from twelve to fifteen years of age, would spend much of their time in the streets and around the wharves and docks,  being trained up to immorality and crime, and preparing to fill up our jails and warehouses."

For 60 years, packinghouses were the lifeblood of the Chesapeake's waterfront communities. Even small towns might have one that packed tomatoes in summer, and oysters in winter, or later when the oyster harvest declined, transitioned to picking and packing crabmeat.

Today, all but a notable handful of these packinghouses are gone, and the few that are left often employ a combination of locals with an influx of immigrants from Central America on H2B visas. JM Clayton's in Cambridge, Metompkin in Crisfield, Chesapeake Landing in St Michaels- these businesses have managed to survive even as their traditional workforce has moved on to jobs with benefits, salaries and indoor heating, and as the Chesapeake oyster industry has plummeted and started to rise again.  Despite these changes, much remains the same for the Bay's remaining oyster packinghouses. It is still dirty work, it is still a job where shuckers get paid by the pound, and one where English is still intermingled with many different languages- all down a long packing table where oysters are shucked by deft hands, faster than the eye can see.

This is indeed pretty essential knowledge. Oysters are first and foremost a source of briny bliss. But they are so much more than that! Oysters are a connection with the Bay's environment, its culture, and its long traditions. They are a food, sure, but they also have sparked conflicts, supported an enormous economy, and changed the Bay's ecosystem in incredible ways-  all things that even oyster connoisseurs might not be aware of.

So read on to see how savvy an oyster lover you are- and even experts might get a few morsels of information to share around the shucking table this Thanksgiving.

1.      They are the same species as oysters from New York, Maine, Florida and Louisiana.

That’s right! Crassostrea virginica, the eastern Oyster is not only native to the Chesapeake Bay but way beyond- all the way up to Nova Scotia and down to the Gulf of Mexico. They have regional flavor distinctions, but every native oyster on the Eastern Seaboard is exactly the same biologically.

2.      There are male oysters and female oysters, but they can swap genders.

To increase their chances of successfully spawning, oysters have a unique adaptation— they can change sex at will. Described by oyster biologist Trevor Kincaid as, “Strictly a case of Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde,” this versatility means the oyster population always a balance of enough males and females to ensure a healthy spat set. Most oysters start their lives out as males but become females by their second year.

3.      Baby oysters are called ‘spat.’

While it sounds like the past tense of ‘to spit,’ ‘spat’ refers to a juvenile oyster that has grown out of its free-floating larval state, when it is known as a ‘veliger.’ Once veligers develop a small ‘foot’ and attach to a hard surface (normally the shell of another oyster), they are then known as spat, and won’t move again for the rest of their lives.

4.    Chesapeake oysters produce pearls.

Almost all oyster species do. But typically, pearls— which are the product of an oyster coating an irritant with layers of nacre— look like the environment surrounding the pearl-producing oyster. In the brackish and algae-rich waters of the Chesapeake Bay, usually that means pearls that are brownish, greenish or just plain ugly.

5.     People killed each other in order to get access to Chesapeake oysters.

In the late 1800’s, technology and transportation combined with an increase in demand lead to the great Chesapeake Oyster Boom. This period, which only lasted 20 years, inspired thousands of men to take to the water to harvest Bay oysters. These newcomers were usually on large sailboats known as skipjacks that used large tools to harvest millions of oysters. So much money was a stake that lawlessness prevailed— skipjack captains and crew got in gun battles with the regulating state Oyster Navy, took shots at oyster harvesters using old-fashioned attached rakes (called ‘tongs’), and the oyster tongers armed themselves and fought back. It was almost total anarchy that only ended when the oyster population started to decline at the turn of the century.

6.   Raw oysters are often alive when you eat them.

If they’re fresh, they might still even have a heartbeat. Raw oysters are living organisms, and when kept cold, they can survive for several days out of the water. If the idea of eating something alive bothers you, just steam them instead. Once the shells pop open, you know they’re ready to eat.

7.   Chesapeake oysters grow in reefs.

Unlike cartoons, oysters don’t really lie on their side in the sand. They grow attached to each other, one generation after another, ideally close to the top of the water. In this way over thousands of years, oysters made reefs miles wide and miles long. Before mass harvesting methods, oyster reefs were so enormous, they were actual impediments to navigation in the Chesapeake Bay. A Swiss visitor to the Chesapeake, Francis Louis Michel, remarked in 1702 that, “The abundance of oysters in incredible. There are whole banks of them so that ships must avoid them.  A sloop, which was to land us at Kingscreek, struck an oyster bed, where we had to wait two hours for the tide.”

8. Oysters have clear blood.

The liquid inside an oyster, known as the oyster’s ‘liquor,’ is savored by oyster aficionados, who relish its briny taste. However, this is often a mixture of water and, when shucked, an oyster’s blood, which is totally clear. So if knowing they were alive didn’t kill your appetite, this might.

9. Chesapeake farmed oysters are most likely sterile.

Known as ‘triploids,’ these sterile oysters have three chromosomes instead of the two found in normally-reproducing oysters. Triploids are used in Bay oyster farms— especially in Virginia— because they are more disease-resistant. Two oyster parasites that are harmless to humans but deadly to oysters, MSX and Dermo, have ravaged wild oyster populations in the Chesapeake. Unlike reproducing or ‘diploid’ oysters, triploids never experience the vulnerable weak period after spawning. Instead, they grow faster and make it to market before impacted by disease. For this reason, many oyster farms now use solely triploid oysters— better living through science!

10. There is not just one kind of Chesapeake oysters.

Thanks to the growth of aquaculture, Chesapeake Bay oysters are now being produced by hundreds of oyster farms, each with its own brand of oysters. From Shooting Points to Pleasure House, each brand can offer up a slightly different tasting experience. Known as an oyster’s ‘merroir’ (like wine’s ‘terroir’) this distillation of an oyster’s environment can vary greatly depending on the location of the oyster farm— an oyster grown in a saltier part of the Bay might be very briny, while an oyster from north on the Bay might be much sweeter. Oysters that develop near marshes might take on an earthy note, while oysters grown near a cliff or rocky shoreline might have a more mineral finish. Try them all and find your favorite!

In today's world where so many of excellent varieties of oysters are available, why are we settling for less when it comes to how they're served? To savor oysters like a real "ostreaphile," try a few of these tips the next time you order up a dozen at your favorite raw bar.

1.     When more than one kind of raw oyster is available, order up a mixed dozen.

An oyster’s flavor can vary greatly depending on the environment where it was grown. Even oysters of the same species can have a remarkable range of flavors, and the best way to explore the incredible array of oysters is to compare and contrast. When you can, order a mixed dozen from two or more places (good raw bars will always tell you where their oysters are sourced), then sit back and enjoy- you’ll be amazed at the differences between the oysters.

2.     Naked oysters first, condiments second.

Raw oysters have very delicate and complex flavors that are easily masked by condiments. Before you drown your oyster in hot sauce or mignonette, taste one plain. Enjoy the unique combination of brine, minerals, and notes of cream or cucumber that oysters can convey. After that, feel free to go crazy with whatever sauces or flavorings you like.

3.     Never order oysters at a restaurant when you can’t see them being shucked.

Some restaurants still pre-shuck their oysters and let them sit. Not only does this dry out the oysters, but it can lead to food poisoning. Only order at a raw bar where the oysters are clearly cold, and if you want to know the particulars about their freshness, ask for the oyster’s tag. All restaurants are required to keep these on hand.

4.     To double your pleasure, pair your oysters with a complimenting wine or beer.

The right beer or wine can perfectly accent the flavors in your oysters- whether a dry white wine like a Sancerre or a hop-forward beer with very salty oysters, or a stout or Gewurtztraminer with a sweeter, buttery oyster from a lower salinity region. Try different combinations until you hit your favorite oyster and drink pairing.

5.     Oyster shells are not trash.

Oyster shells are an incredibly valuable resource for oyster reef restoration. Baby oysters, or ‘spat,’ need old shells to attach to in order to grow. Oyster shells have been depleted in many states, and the recycling of spent shell is a way to help aid oyster restoration efforts. So, don’t throw oyster shells away— and definitely don’t use them in your driveway or front path. Recycle them! Oyster shell recycling organizations are found throughout the Chesapeake Bay, and many restaurants have partnered with these organizations to make sure their shell is recycled. Always ask whether the restaurant recycles shell when eating oysters at a raw bar, and when at home, drop off your oyster shells at a recycling location. Save the Bay, one oyster at a time.

Permalink

]]>Kate LivieFri, 06 Nov 2015 15:24:09 +0000https://katelivie.com/blog/2015/11/6/chesapeake-stabbers5633a733e4b08bd6386d81be:563cc0e6e4b00c2a613726ee:563cc234e4b07255a4633bdd

Not all oyster knives are made the same. Although oysters are similar in shape and general appearance no matter where you go— only really varying in size and shell thickness— the knives for shucking them come in a whole array of shapes and sizes. That's because each region has developed its own way of prizing open an oyster. Here in the Chesapeake, we go in from the side. This technique, known as bill shucking, requires a knife that can coax open the narrow lip of an oyster's bill without breaking— and what's been created is known as the "Chesapeake stabber."

The knife above is a perfect traditional example. The bulbous handle provides a firm grip, while the delicate iron blade can nimbly pierce the thin seam between the oyster's two shells and detach the oyster's muscle without marring the meat.

It's a simple tool, really, but its beauty is in its supreme functionality. Developed in the 1880's, the style is timeless. Though fancier oyster knives exist (like this one or even this one- seriously??) sometimes, you just can't beat the classics.