Home › Shell-Fish › Broiled Oysters
Broiled Oysters
Dry large, selected oysters in a napkin, pepper and salt, and broil on a fine folding wire-broiler, turning frequently to keep the juice from wasting. Serve immediately in a hot dish with little pieces of butter on them. Or, pepper a cup of dry bread-crumbs, dry one quart of oysters in a napkin, dip each in butter previously peppered, roll well in the crumbs, and broil over a good fire for five to seven minutes. Serve immediately in a hot dish with butter, pepper and salt.
Two methods for the same thing: shucked oysters cooked dry and fast over live coals, plain or crumbed. The whole business hinges on heat and speed.
- The hinge: timeFive to seven minutes is written for a hinged wire broiler held over a coal fire (the recipe says "a good fire"), and it is likely too long for a modern gas or electric broiler. Shucked oysters are done when the edges ruffle and the flesh firms — figure on roughly a minute a side plain, two to three minutes total for crumbed ones under a preheated broiler at its highest setting, and check rather than trust the clock. Past that they tighten into erasers.
- "Selected" oystersProbably no more than large oysters picked out for the purpose, though "select" was also a trade size grade for shucked oysters. Ask for extra-select or large shucked oysters; smaller ones fare badly over direct heat.
- A quart of oystersShucked oysters were sold by liquid measure. A quart is somewhere around 1.5 to 2 lb with its liquor and counts vary widely with grade — enough for four or so as a first course.
- Drying in a napkinNot optional. Roll the oysters on a clean towel and blot until the surface is matte, or the liquor will steam them and the crumbs will slide off.
- "Dip each in butter"Melted butter, seasoned with pepper before dipping. Clarified butter browns less and holds the crumbs better under a fierce broiler.
- The broiler itselfA folding wire broiler is a hinged double grid with a long handle, held above coals and flipped whole. A fine-mesh grill basket over charcoal is the closest equivalent; failing that, lay the oysters on a preheated rack set close under the broiler element and turn them once with tongs.
- Bread-crumbsDry crumbs here means stale bread grated fine, not the sandy commercial kind and not panko. Grate day-old white bread and sift out the coarse pieces.
- ServingThe dish must be hot — warm it in the oven while the oysters cook. Butter added at the table, not before, so it melts on the plate rather than pooling under the crumbs.
The Dixie Cook Book was compiled in the 1880s for Southern households at a moment when barreled and canned oysters from the Chesapeake and the Gulf moved inland by rail, so that a quart of shucked oysters was an everyday grocery purchase well away from any coast. That commerce is why the recipe assumes oysters already out of the shell and sold by the quart, and why broiling — the fastest and least apologetic treatment — could be offered as a matter of course rather than a luxury. The folding wire broiler was a common fitting on a hearth or range: two hinged grids that let a cook turn a dozen delicate things at once without touching them, and the instruction to turn frequently "to keep the juice from wasting" is the whole argument for using one. The crumbed variation, dipped in butter and rolled, might plausibly be read as a fried-oyster technique borrowed for the fire, and it points toward the enormous nineteenth-century American appetite for oysters in every possible form.