Creamy mussels with smoky bacon & cider
Mussels are the future. They're absolutely gorgeous, cheap, exciting, easy to farm and so quick to cook. The other brilliant thing about them is that they don't need any feeding: they live off tiny plants that they filter out of the water so they actually clean the sea. I want to help you fall back in love with them. I had my first mussel when I was about 7 years old and I remember it to this day. It's so exciting to pick the first one out of the shell and enjoy it then use that shell as pincers to eat the rest, chucking the empty shells into another bowl. My kids love them – they're great fun for kids to eat.
Estimated Nutrition (whole recipe, rough)
Counts 7 of 8 ingredients — the other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and contribute nothing above, so the real totals are higher.
What these numbers assume — 7 portions →
| Ingredient | Portion assumed | kcal |
|---|---|---|
| Flour | 1 cup (125g) all-purpose | 455 |
| Olive Oil | 1 tbsp (14g) | 119 |
| Shrimp | 100g cooked | 99 |
| Bacon | 1 slice cooked (8g) | 43 |
| Garlic | 1 clove (3g) | 4 |
| Tarragon | 1 tsp dried (0.5g) | 2 |
| Parsley | 1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g) | 1 |
| Cider | not in our table | 0 |
Totals for the whole recipe, adding one typical portion per ingredient — listed above. Quantities in the recipe are not counted, so this is a rough guide only — not suitable for medical or dietary planning.
Ingredients
- olive oil
- 6 rashers higher-welfare smoked streaky bacon, sliced 1cm thick
- 1 kg mussels, from
- , ask your fishmonger, debearded and scrubbed clean
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and finely sliced
- 150 ml good-quality cider
- 2 tablespoons fat-free natural yoghurt
- 1 small bunch fresh tarragon, leaves picked and roughly chopped
- 1 small bunch fresh flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and roughly chopped
- ½-1 loaf good-quality rustic bread or ciabatta, sliced 2cm thick
- 1 clove garlic, halved
- extra virgin olive oil