Home › Planked Dinners and Grills › Spindled Oysters
Spindled Oysters
2 dozen large oysters 2 ounces bacon 6 slices thin toast 6 steel skewers Drain, clean and dry oysters on soft towel; cut the bacon in very thin slices. Fill skewers with bacon and oysters alternately, running skewer cross grain through the muscle of oyster and stringing bits of bacon by one corner so that each slice may overlay an oyster. Do not crowd. Place skewers across baking pan and cook over gas or in a quick oven five minutes. Do not take oysters from spindle, but lay each one on slice of toast, pouring over them drip from pan. Serves 6.
A skewer-grilled version of bacon-wrapped oysters, timed short on purpose. The whole dish stands or falls on how briefly it cooks.
- Five minutes means five minutesOysters are done the moment their edges ruffle and the flesh firms; past that they tighten into rubber and weep their liquor into the pan. Pull them as soon as the bacon has coloured, even if that is short of the stated time.
- A quick ovenIn period usage this is usually taken as roughly 400-425F. "Cook over gas" most likely means under or over a gas flame rather than in the oven, which is faster still - watch it continuously rather than trusting the clock.
- Spindles and skewers"Spindle" here is simply the steel skewer. Metal conducts heat, so it will warm the oyster from the inside as well as the outside; soaked bamboo will work but cooks more slowly.
- Two ounces of bacon is not muchThat is roughly three or four modern thin-cut rashers for two dozen oysters, so each "slice" is a small scrap hooked on by one corner to drape over an oyster. Modern supermarket bacon is cut considerably thicker; buy thin-cut or ask for it sliced thin, or the fat will not render in the time the oysters can stand.
- If the bacon still lagsGive the rashers a minute or two in a dry pan first, until they are limp and partly rendered but nowhere near crisp, then skewer. This lets both components finish together.
- Drying the oystersDo not skip the towel. Wet oysters steam rather than sear, and the surface water dilutes the bacon drippings that become the sauce.
- Through the muscle, across the grainThe adductor muscle is the firm pale plug; piercing it crosswise is what keeps an oyster from tearing loose and dropping into the pan. Leave a little space between pieces on the skewer so heat reaches all sides.
- ServingSix skewers on six pieces of toast, four oysters each, as a first course or light supper dish. Serve the moment the pan drippings go over, before the toast softens.
Oysters and bacon cooked together on a skewer are an old pairing in Anglo-American cooking, best known as the savoury called angels on horseback, where the bacon is rolled around the oyster rather than laid over it. Dishes served on their own skewer or on a wooden plank were a fashion in American cookery of the earlier twentieth century, when food arriving in the hardware it was cooked in was considered smart. Oysters were far cheaper and more plentiful then than now, which is worth remembering when reading the casual call for two dozen large ones.