Snails~~~

[dinnerstick]

found these guys lurking around the back yard, after lots of holes showed up in my hop plant leaves. i have eaten many a snail in my days, but never cultivated my own. anyone?

 

[podz]

I've got an infestation of snails in my yard as well. I kill them everytime I see them. They're not big enough to eat.

Snails need a lot of minerals in order to grow their shells. That's the reason you see them stuck to the side of concrete walls on houses, etc. And they leave pock marks in the cement.

There are lots of varieties of snails. To raise for eating, you'd need to get ahold of one of the central european species. Beyond that, a single snail can lay about 400 eggs per year and they have a high rate of survival.

 

[dinnerstick]

these are the edible ones. i've also got a species of small stripey ones, these ones i fling as far as i can so others can enjoy their work.

i'm just going to keep them long enough to flush out their digestive tracts, and then they are going to become intimate with hot butter and garlic. rather then cultivating in the literal sense. as in, i'm not going to keep a colony, just have a starter (there are 5 of them).

 

[Quaker]

Best birthday meal I've had was snails with chicken, chili peppers, eggplant, and Yangshuo fried rice. Of course it was vastly improved once my guide instructed me to nipple off and spit out the innermost gritty portion where the shell and young snails form.

 

[dinnerstick]

my snail adventure for the summer continues. i collected those ones a couple months ago, was going to eat them but i kept finding more and adding them to the snail jail. one day i didn't secure the lid and they all escaped (slowly), but didn't stray far, so i collected them back over a few days, then a couple friends started bringing me a few here and there. so now i'm running a larger prison colony and going to cook them up in a couple weeks. i keep them in a clean plastic box with lots of grape leaves (they were eating those when i collected them) and when my basil plants flower i throw the tops in, they love that. or carrot peelings, that sort of thing, and i keep some calcium carbonate pellets in there, they suck on them for shell building. i tried to 'breed' them, i read that they will lay eggs on soil, so i gave them a pot of soil for a few weeks, no evidence so far.
got to clean the box every week or 10 days, and check for maggots and whatnot. i just avoided a fly infestation, cleaned the maggots off the shells and back into a nice clean box. they got very active after the bath. excuse to post pics anyways.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

Feed them herbs & garlic that you would cook them with, just to see if they take on the flavour.
Regards, GF.

 

[jdm61]

Are the ones that you have one of the more desirable breeds for eating? I tried those once and they were pretty good, but anything served in that garlicky "snail butter" has a head start in the taste department IMO. I had mussels prepared that way in Brussels with the butter sauce and a few bread crumbs sprinkled on top and they were amazing!!!:rockin:

 

[dinnerstick]

Feed them herbs & garlic that you would cook them with, just to see if they take on the flavour.
Regards, GF.

yeah i'm gonna give them a few days on basil and parsley i think.

 

[dinnerstick]

Are the ones that you have one of the more desirable breeds for eating?

yep! these are the standard 'escargot' snails.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Feed them herbs & garlic that you would cook them with, just to see if they take on the flavour.
Regards, GF.

I tried that once with my wife. She had me eating watermelon for three months with every other day taste testings before she caught on.

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Wife an I used to order the snails at steak n ale all the time before they closed. Miss the flavor.

 

[podz]

Wife an I used to order the snails at steak n ale all the time before they closed. Miss the flavor.

You should be able to find canned snails at any large supermarket.

Do yourself a big favor, though, and don't waste your money on 6-depression snail plates. Nobody who likes snails is happy with eating just 6. When my wife and I have snails, we both eat two dozen.

I have a set of these 12-depression french snail plates. Damn, they are expensive in the US. They are less than half that price here in Finland. Anyway, they are porcelain and thin so they can fit in the dishwasher.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EZ1HMJC/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[jdm61]

Podz, at your price or ours, I would never put anything that specialized in the dishwasher. Treat it like you would treat a good knife because the damage you can do is MUCH more expensive than your time that it takes to wash by hand. No here is a question. I suspect that most of the French pairing suggestions would be for a nice dry white wine with your snails. What kin of beer would you guys choose? i would think that you could apply this paring to other similar garlicky good invertebrate dishes like the mussels with snail butter and perhaps even scampi.

 

[CreamyGoodness]

Podz, at your price or ours, I would never put anything that specialized in the dishwasher. Treat it like you would treat a good knife because the damage you can do is MUCH more expensive than your time that it takes to wash by hand. No here is a question. I suspect that most of the French pairing suggestions would be for a nice dry white wine with your snails. What kin of beer would you guys choose? i would think that you could apply this paring to other similar garlicky good invertebrate dishes like the mussels with snail butter and perhaps even scampi.

Personally I think I would go with a lemony IPA. Thats a LOT of delicious butter and garlic to cut through...

But then, I have a somewhat coarse palet.

 

[jdm61]

Personally I think I would go with a lemony IPA. Thats a LOT of delicious butter and garlic to cut through...

But then, I have a somewhat coarse palet.

Yeah, it is pretty dense. Chez Leon in Brussels had the St. Feuillien brewery brew up a special beer for the restaurant. It sounds like a medium weight 6.5% ABV blonde ale, with a little orange peel added to the mix.

 

[podz]

Podz, at your price or ours, I would never put anything that specialized in the dishwasher. Treat it like you would treat a good knife because the damage you can do is MUCH more expensive than your time that it takes to wash by hand. No here is a question. I suspect that most of the French pairing suggestions would be for a nice dry white wine with your snails. What kin of beer would you guys choose? i would think that you could apply this paring to other similar garlicky good invertebrate dishes like the mussels with snail butter and perhaps even scampi.

I've got two full sets of china, each service for 12. One set is English bone china, and the other one is German porcelain. The bone china set has been in everyday use for years, raising three teens, and they go into the dishwasher 2 or even 3 times per day.

I don't even own a plate that cost less than 20 bucks. Of course my snail plates go into the dishwasher. As does all of my crystal except for the ones which are too tall to fit on the top rack.

Wash by hand, with a house of 5 people who all eat a lot, that's pretty funny ;-)

 

[dinnerstick]

I suspect that most of the French pairing suggestions would be for a nice dry white wine with your snails. What kin of beer would you guys choose?

great question. i can see a good bodied belgian blond with high carbonation going pretty well, indeed the orange peel sounds like it would work, maybe a bitter, lemony, bigger saison such as fantome... could go for a gueuze, a medium sharp one like oud beersel or de cam, but would that be too aggressively sour against the garlic?

 

[podz]

great question. i can see a good bodied belgian blond with high carbonation going pretty well, indeed the orange peel sounds like it would work, maybe a bitter, lemony, bigger saison such as fantome... could go for a gueuze, a medium sharp one like oud beersel or de cam, but would that be too aggressively sour against the garlic?

Wine: Pinot Grigio (white) or Valpolicella (red)

Beer: Stout or Porter


All are good choices.

 

[jdm61]

Wine: Pinot Grigio (white) or Valpolicella (red)

Beer: Stout or Porter


All are good choices.

On the French wine side, the obvious choice would be a white wine fro Burgundy. I would also think that the Sauvignon Blanc based wines like Sancerre or Pouilly Fuisse would work well too. If the case of the mussels, you would probably drink the same wine that was used as the steaming liquid for the first part of the cooking process.

 

[jdm61]

great question. i can see a good bodied belgian blond with high carbonation going pretty well, indeed the orange peel sounds like it would work, maybe a bitter, lemony, bigger saison such as fantome... could go for a gueuze, a medium sharp one like oud beersel or de cam, but would that be too aggressively sour against the garlic?

As you well know, that is going to vary drastically by region where you are. We have a little trouble getting as big selection of gueuze over here for obvious reasons. They don't make that much of the stuff. The one that I have had over here was not really super sour like the Duchesse de Bourgogne that I had. We obvious get Saison Dupont and some Fantome. I have a 750ml bottle of Cuvee de Jonquils, which is supposed to be the top of the heap of the French Bier de Gardes. I wonder how that mgith work with some garlicky mollusks?

 

[podz]

On the French wine side, the obvious choice would be a white wine fro Burgundy. I would also think that the Sauvignon Blanc based wines like Sancerre or Pouilly Fuisse would work well too. If the case of the mussels, you would probably drink the same wine that was used as the steaming liquid for the first part of the cooking process.

I don't like most French wine, so I don't generally promote it unless the question is something so acidic that it is able to dissolve goose fat from the inside of your cheeks. In any case, save the Pouilly for oysters and lobster; it's a waste of money with snails.


Signed,
Italian Wine Lover