Try stuffing yourself with oysters this Thanksgiving

11/9/2013

In coastal towns from Maryland to Georgia, cold weather means it’s time for an oyster roast.

This tradition is not so ingrained in the North. Instead, Northerners make oyster stuffings, stews or old-school side dishes such as Oysters Florentine. Most often, oysters are stars of the raw bar.

A friend from Alabama looks upon my Northern people with mock disdain. “Y’all don’t know how to live,” he said.

Until I attended an oyster roast, I would have doubted him.

But he’s right. After attending my first a number of years ago, I became an oyster-roast evangelist.

Though an oyster roast can be staged anytime during the fall and winter months, for my family one has become a Thanksgiving tradition. The timing carries the benefit of a ready audience of guests as well as permission to eat and drink with abandon.

Cold weather inspired a craving, so I decided to host my own oyster roast in Pittsburgh.

With a bushel of oysters, some condiments, a borrowed gas grill and steam pot, I held a happy-hour oyster roast a few weeks before Thanksgiving last year for a handful of guinea pigs. Of the 20 or so attendees, one person had been to an oyster roast before — during a visit to Charleston, S.C., as it turned out.

What resulted was a festive affair under a tent adorned by strings of lights. Guests drank beer around newspaper-covered tables on a chilly clear night. Passers-by saw friends and joined in.

At the grill, I added oysters to the steam basket set within a pot of boiling water. Less than five minutes on the fire and oysters were ready.

I pulled the pot to dump them on a papered table, where guests pried open warm shells with oyster knives and ran blades along muscle to dislodge meat.

Then there was anticipation of how to dress an oyster. Once it’s transferred to a saltine, the variations are infinite. Purists opted for a squeeze from a lemon wedge. Hotheads doused a cracker with hot sauce, Tabasco or a slice of pickled pepper. Nostalgists dolloped a spoonful of horseradish-laced cocktail sauce. And if there’s crumbled bacon? Everyone loves bacon, especially as an oyster condiment.

Travis Croxton is co-founder of Rappahannock River Oysters, a Chesapeake Bay shellfish-farming operation he started with his cousin Ryan in 2002. They are the grandchildren of oystermen.

For oyster roasts, Travis Croxton recommends bigger, meaty oysters.

’’You want oysters from less salty waters that are less delicate than the ones you might eat raw so they hold up better,” he said.

Unofficial ambassadors of the Charleston oyster roast, authors of The Lee Brothers Cookbook and Simple Fresh Southern, Matt and Ted Lee have educated readers on the process.

’’Build a roaring fire on level ground, and set a trestle made of four cinder blocks and a sturdy sheet of scrap metal over it to serve as an extra-large griddle,” they wrote in “A Lowcountry Oyster Roast, Way Up North,” for The New York Times in 2005.

’’When the metal is searing hot, you literally shove on a layer of oysters and blanket them with water-soaked burlap bags or old towels.”

Fortunately, it can be less complicated than this. Who has spare scrap metal and burlap?

A standard grill and a shallow pan filled with a half-inch of water will do the trick. A pot of boiling water with a steamer on a grill also works.

Croxton recommends something even easier.

’’Turn the grill to high heat,” he said. “Cover the surface of your grill with (oysters). When a few pop, take them all off and shuck them. They’re really just warm, but they won’t be overcooked or shriveled.” He said the whole process takes two to three minutes, tops.

Ask a Southerner about condiments and you’d get some strong opinions. One that’s a must is Tabasco or hot sauce. Another is my father’s go-to — homemade cocktail sauce with horseradish.

’’My favorite is garlic butter sauce,” said Croxton. The Lee brothers go with something more acidic — a mignonette.

For the one I hosted here, pickled banana pepper slices and bacon disappeared quickly.

Don’t forget to stock plenty of saltines, a replacement for a fork or spoon.

As terrific as oysters are for shellfish fans, this need not be a seafood-only affair. The Lee brothers serve chili dogs and a squash casserole for the seafood-wary.

For my gathering, I also went with sweet sausages and rolls. A generous guest made a terrific brisket-and-white-bean stew.

In the meantime, once all the oysters had been eaten, a couple of attendees coveted them enough to scavenge for muscles left on shells.

I should have ordered another bushel.

At least there was plenty of beer.

Orange Mignonette

3/​4 cups orange juice (about 8 oranges)

1/​4 cup Champagne vinegar

2 large shallots, finely chopped

1/​2 teaspoon granulated sugar

Whisk ingredients together in a small bowl until sugar dissolves. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in refrigerator for half an hour.

Source: Adapted from Matt and Ted Lee from The New York Times

Homemade cocktail sauce

1 cup ketchup

1 tablespoon red wine or other vinegar

3 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons prepared horseradish, or to taste

Combine ketchup, vinegar and butter in a small saucepan and cook over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter melts. At this point, you can keep the sauce warm for over an hour — but keep the heat as low as possible.

Add horseradish to taste.

Source: Adapted from Epicurious.com