Hey folks, obligatory these are not sardines, by in fact tinned smoked mussels. Patagonia brand in broth and olive oil. I bit into one and it had this hard black thing inside. Has anyone experienced this before? Any ideas what it may be? I'm reallyyyy hoping it's safe to keep eat but also minorly icked out.
by Honest-Art-99
10 Comments
you mussel still had its beard attached when processed
A beard – those should have been discarded at canning
Ugh that looks like what we call “stink bugs” in Georgia. Not sure of the proper name.
It’s called byssal thread. It’s what every mussel uses to hold itself onto whatever material it matures on. Within the process of the cannery most of these are removed or trimmed, but it’s common for some to make it to the can. This can also be called the “beard” of the mussel.
I applaud ppl exploring eating tinned seafood especially less travelled stuff for shellfish like little smoked mussels or oysters but it sometimes amazes me how often ppl never may have seen this stuff in the wild/natural setting or even buying it fresh in ethnic wet markets/Costco. Perhaps never been to areas where you can harvest shellfish in its natural habitat I guess.
Guess I’m in an admittedly skewed category where I grew up going to ocean settings (but born and raised landlocked, closest ocean is a 10 hr drive away) as a kid and was encouraged at a very young age to help harvest clams, mussels and oysters and whatever bivalve edible things in shells, enough to the point I can immediately identify stuff like what beards are and adhere to what red tide warnings implicate.
Again I still applaud those who delve into stuff like this that’s outside of their normal palette, Don’t mean to cuss you out, it’s not your fault for not knowing, this is purely that the QA element at the canning plant failed. Just was a realization after seeing many “what is this in my tinned mussels” posts, it’s always the beard.
I had to pull the beards off every single mussel shipment when I worked at a seafood restaurant. Not fun stuff.
beard or bugs ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That spoon has seen some things
I had a tin of Patagonia smoked mussels a few weeks ago and I’d say a fourth of them had that :/ it was a bummer because they are one of my favorite tins
More mussels!