Spicy Seafood Fra Diavolo (and the Secret Nobody Tells You)

Seafood or Mussels Fra Diavolo or Mussels cooked in spicy tomato sauce is an essential ingredient for a good summer diet, however, you’re probably making 1 major mistake when making it and we’re gonna fix that right now.

RECIPE:
Seafood Fra Diavolo
https://www.notanothercookingshow.tv/post/Seafood-fra-diavolo
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muscles Fred Alo is an essential ingredient in a good summer diet however you’re probably making one major mistake when you do it but we’re going to fix that today but first let’s prep our ingredients which call for 124 o can of whole peeled tomatoes and we want to turn them into a tomato puree or Pata you could also just use a jar of Pata as well and we do this by running it through a food mill at least that’s how I do it some people will blend it but sometimes that changes the color and beats air into it so I like doing it old school for a perfect result every time our tomatoes are pureed and we have a nice thick Pata now cans of tomatoes can come a little bit watery a little bit thicker that’s something to note in this recipe and next I need to prep an onion now for this I think a marinara sauce works well and to me what differs between my weekday sauce and something like a marinara sauce is things like onion and seasoning but I don’t like chunky onion in my sauce so I’m going to dice it as fine as possible I’m going just half an onion Vinnie don’t put too many onions in the sauce and then set that off to the side then I need two cloves of garlic that I’ll just slice in half peel off the papers and then slice as thinly as possible set that aside then next up all we need is a little bit of white wine a little fresh basil and then I’m going to use some of my good uh Italian dried oregano you buy it in this thing you keep it in the bag and then you just scrunch it whenever you need some or some regular dried oregano works fine too now let’s talk muscles now here we have a bad bag of Prince Edward Island muscles now when you go buy muscles at a store usually you get them in a bag like this and if your fish source is reliable you’re probably getting them from Prince Edward Island in Canada now if you remember my fish Fila video I value sustainability and seafood highly and when you buy Prince Edward Island muscles that’s something you can feel real good about and I’m going to tell you why and while I do I’m going to clean and debeard these muscles debearding means simply removing this little hairy bit sticking out of the shell that the muscle uses to latch onto something to grow and you just kind of pull it out like that so while I clean and debeard these muscles here are four reasons why Prince Edward Island muscles are exceptional number one Prince Edward Island muscles are carefully produced which allows them to ensure consistently super plump tender and sweet muscles and number two part of the reason they can ensure that is cuz the waters around Prince Edward Island are pristine and contributes to their super interior texture and flavor next up is that they’re sustainable these muscles are farmed but in a wild environment and they’re kind of like filters they kind of like filter out gunk in the ocean and because they’re farmed and sustainable they’re actually available all over the place so any good fish Source should stock them so now some of them have beards and some of them don’t we’re just going to go through and remove any that do and then we’re ready to go if there’s any that don’t close when you try and smash it then that’s likely dead and you can get rid of it so so here we have our cleaned and de bearded muscles now we just need some good crusty bread just cut on the bias to almost give somewhat of a similar shape to the muscle shell itself good bread is vital in a recipe like this I’m just going to hit it with a little bit of olive oil a little salt and while I get that sauce going I’m going to toss these into the toaster to get them nicely toasted now we can get to fixing the one mistake that many of you are probably making so we’re getting our marinara started and we’re going to make a few adjustments to it to prepare for the eventual muscles so in my 3/4 saer I’m going to add a little bit of olive oil and then I’m going to throw the onions in I’m going to season them with a little bit of salt and I’m going to allow those to sweat and soften once they do I’m going to add a little basil stem and the sliced garlic and I’m going to sauté it until the garlic begins to become fragrant now we’re making fried diavo which means spicy so we’re going to add some chili flake and then some calabrian chilies sauté that for a minute or two and then we can deglaze with some white wine now you want to reduce that wine down before we add the tomatoes and while that does I can toss the bread into the toaster to begin toasting now we can go ahead and add the tomatoes and now if you were to add the muscles right now they would release liquid and make this sauce too runny and this is where most people screw up this is where right now once you add the tomato you go ahead and add the muscles don’t do that we need to reduce that tomato sauce just like we do in weekday sauce and just like when we reduce the sauce all the way down in weekday sauce we don’t want to add a ton more water back into it this is no different the muscles have liquor inside of them they’ll release so if your tomato sauce is a little loose it’ll only get looser and it won’t have this nice thick viscous consistency for the muscles and the bread to stick to so we reduce the tomato sauce down thicken it even further to kind of compensate for that extra liquid that’s going to be reintroduced into the sauce once we add the muscles don’t go adding everything at once and then once that tomato sauce is nicely reduced and thickened almost to the point where it may be a little too thick then we can add the muscles and it’ll balance itself back out once the muscles are in the sauce you give them a toss make sure they’re well coated and starting to get hot and then we can throw a lid on and cook those for about a minute maybe two then we’re going to check them and most of them are about half open so I’m going to tear in some fresh basil to perfume the whole mix give it a toss get that heat kind of Distributing all around the muscles and once they’re all fully open I’ll kill the heat put the lid back on and just let them chill in the Steam for another 30 seconds to a minute at this point the toast is ready so I’m just going to set those up to the side and then we can serve it to that pot of muscles I’m going to scrunch in some of that dried oregano I’m going to squeeze a little bit of lemon juice into the mix to brighten it all up give it one last toss and make sure to remove any muscles that never open then we can start to Plate the muscles you don’t have to get too fancy but it’s nice to kind of have all of them poking upwards it just gives this sort of 3D texture to the plate then we want to make sure we pour plenty of that sauce into the mix and then we’re just going to scrunch a little bit more oregano on top some more fresh basil and then I’m going to finish it with some fresh lemon zest and right now in this bowl you’ve got yourself a spicy little party to enjoy I think it’s finger food the thing about muscles is they’re small so you can eat a ton of them you can use one shell as a little spoon if you want get a little sauce from the bottom you see how runny the tomato sauce is if you don’t reduce that that’s going to just be Water by the time you’re eating it the muscles give off way more water than you think and the muscles are salty so I chose not even to Salt the tomato sauce that’s up to you anyway this is something you enjoy you don’t rush it so I’m going to take my time and if you haven’t watched check out my last episode episode two of my Sunday supper Series where I take you behind the scenes of my Sunday supper popup it’s a ton of fun this recipe is going to be down in the description that’s all that I have today I’ll see you next time until and take care of yourself and go feed yourself [Music]