Burn and Rave

I tried cooking mussels with some friends recently.  My mom usually uses frozen boxed mussels that are already halved, but I decided to go fresh and buy live mussels.  Along the way, I learned a few lessons on how to prepare fresh mussels.  My friends and I immediately soaked the mussels in water with a sprinkle of salt after getting home from the grocery store.  Some of the mussels immediately opened up to spit out the sand.  Others remained closed.  Then we realized that we need to sort through the mussels to figure out which ones were bad and toss them out before going any further with the cooking.  ??  Call mom.  She said that the bad mussels have cracked shells and are open.  Oops.  It was hard to tell which mussel was open because it was actively spitting out sand and which one was open because it was dead.  We should have sorted them before setting them in the water.  Lesson learned, but for now we decided to just toss the cracked mussels and give the other ones the benefit of the doubt.  After washing the mussels and stir frying them with minced garlic and butter, we set them on a plate to serve.  Wow, the mussel flesh sure was tiny, a quarter the size of the frozen ones even though the shell sizes were the same.  They ended up being delicious, but second lesson learned here is to just use the frozen ones.  No sorting required.  No confusion and disappointment with the size.  Next time I’ll use frozen mussels, which can be preapred faster and will leave me more time to play with the seasoning and style.