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Broiled Oysters on the Half-Shell
Select large shells, clean with a brush, open, saving juice; put oysters in boiling water for a few minutes, remove and place each oyster in a half-shell, with juice; place on a gridiron over a brisk fire, and when they begin to boil, season with butter, salt and pepper (some add a drop of lemon juice.) Serve on the half-shell.
A simple grilled-oyster method that only needs translation on two counts: the blanching step and the fire.
- The hinge: keep the heat briefOysters are done the moment the edges ruffle and the liquor bubbles at the rim of the shell. The blanch plus the grilling in this recipe can easily add up to five or six minutes of cooking, which shrinks them to rubber. Blanch for well under a minute, or skip the blanch and grill the raw oysters in their shells until the liquor simmers, about 3 to 5 minutes.
- Why blanch at allThe oysters are already opened before the dip, so the boiling water is not a shucking aid; it most likely served to firm the oyster so it would sit in the shell. If you shuck cold, the step is unnecessary.
- Gridiron over a brisk fireA charcoal grill with the coals raked to one side, or a gas grill on high, does the same work. Set the shells directly on the grate; a bed of coarse salt or a wadded foil ring keeps them level so the juice does not run out.
- Saving juiceThe liquor released during shucking. Strain it through a fine sieve to catch shell grit, then spoon a little back into each shell before grilling.
- SeasoningAdd the butter, salt and pepper once the liquor is bubbling, not before, so the butter does not simply burn off over the fire. About a teaspoon of butter per oyster is right.
- Shell selectionDeep-cupped oysters hold liquor and butter; flat ones spill. Discard any oyster whose shell does not close when tapped, and any that has already gaped open.
- YieldThe original gives none. Reckon six oysters per person as a first course, a dozen as a light supper dish.
Buckeye Cookery (first published in Ohio in 1877 and reissued through the 1880s) was compiled from contributed household recipes, and its oyster recipes reflect how thoroughly the railroad and the ice barrel had carried oysters inland. Ohio was a long way from tidewater, yet mid-century American cookbooks from the interior routinely assume a cook can buy oysters in the shell as well as by the can or keg; oyster cellars and saloons were fixtures of Midwestern cities in this period. Broiling or roasting on the half-shell is the least interventionist treatment in the book's oyster repertoire, which otherwise runs to fries, stews, scallops and patties. The parenthetical "some add a drop of lemon juice" is characteristic of the volume's method: it reports the range of practice among its contributors rather than settling on one version.