Oyster Blog — Oysters

We caught this oyster spawn event just at the right moment... 15 minutes later and the spawn was gone, dispersed by the currents.

Whose idea was it to designate August 5th National Oyster Day? Is there an Australian prankster embedded in the Bureau of Obscure Food Holidays who's sabotaging our ability to truly celebrate our nation's most valuable bivalve? If you haven't already heard: August is an iffy month to consume raw oysters. They might make you sick, and they might be spawny.  But maybe August is a fantastic time to be an oyster? The water's warm, the sun's out, you and all your friends and neighbors are spawning, and there's less risk that you'll be harvested and eaten. Tomorrow we'll be celebrating...

Well, it's that time of year again. Summertime. And the oysters are doing what they do: getting spawny. And you can no longer eat them raw because of naturally-occurring salt water bacteria. We've all been here before. If you look really closely at the oyster in the foreground you'll see vein-like patterns in the belly meat. Yes, this isn't appetizing, and we probably shouldn't show you. But it's interesting and educational. This is what oysters look like just before they get really spawny. This oyster wasn't milky, just soft. And see the black specks on the oyster in the background?...

We sell two styles of oyster knife in the store: a Dexter Russel with a long blade and a generic short handled knife with a short blade. The size of the blade you need depends on the size of the oyster you're attacking: bigger oysters need a bigger blade. Our shucking crew uses Dexter Russel knives sharpened to a dagger's point. At oyster tasting events we stick with the short-handled blades... they're all the horsepower you need for an extra small oyster. The collection pictured below was assembled by the folks at Oyster Aficionado. We found it on Rowan Jacobsen's...

A couple of months ago Adam pulled some seed out of a grow-bag and brought it into the store to shuck. The oysters had led sheltered lives... they hadn't yet been tumbled or tossed around on the beach, and so they had soft, brittle shells that broke into pieces when we shucked them. You might be upset if you ordered oysters in a restaurant and that mess arrived on your plate! The Hama Hama Oyster Mama was so strong in her twenties that she could twist an apple into two pieces. Now we're taking it a step further and opening...