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Boiled Oysters
Wash shell-oysters perfectly clean, place in a small willow basket, drop in a kettle of boiling water, and when shells open, lift basket, and serve oysters on the half shell.
A three-line method that depends entirely on timing and on the quality of the oysters. The basket is just a lifting device — a wire strainer, pasta insert or steamer basket does the same work.
- The hinge: pull them the moment they gapeOysters are done when the shells first part, usually 2 to 4 minutes in hard-boiling water depending on size. Left in past that point the meat tightens into rubber and the liquor cooks away.
- Discard the ones that stay shutAn oyster that refuses to open after several minutes past its neighbours should be thrown out rather than pried. The same goes for any that were already gaping and did not close when tapped before cooking.
- Willow basketA willow basket was one of the cheap kitchen tools used for lowering things into boiling water. Any metal steamer insert, chip basket or long-handled sieve substitutes with no change to the result.
- Steaming beats boilingModern practice sets the oysters over an inch or two of boiling water rather than in it. You lose less of the liquor in the shell, which is the best part of the dish.
- Cleaning matters more than the book saysScrub the shells under cold running water with a stiff brush and pick out grit from the hinge. Whatever clings to the outside ends up in the shell liquor when it opens.
- ServingServe at once, on the deeper half shell with its juices, and set out lemon, pepper, vinegar or melted butter separately. Allow six to twelve oysters a person as a first course.
- SourcingBuy live, cold-stored oysters from a shop with turnover, keep them cup-side down under a damp cloth, and never in sealed plastic or standing water.
Cooking oysters in the shell was the plainest of nineteenth-century treatments, and it survived in print because it needed no seasoning, no sauce and no skill with an oyster knife — heat does the shucking. The Dixie Cook Book appeared in the 1880s, when Chesapeake and Gulf oysters were being shipped inland by rail and barrel in large quantity and appear to have been among the cheaper animal foods available to a Southern household; a chapter of a dozen or more oyster recipes was common enough in the general cookbooks of the period. The willow basket named here was ordinary equipment, the sort of thing used for blanching greens as readily as shellfish. The instruction to serve "on the half shell" after cooking is often taken as a reminder that the phrase once described presentation rather than, as it usually does now, raw oysters.