Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Oysters along with all the Oysters containing recipes presented on this site, with 66 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Oysters recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Oysters as a major wild food ingredient.



Oysters are a group of bivalve molluscs with highly-calcified shells that live in marine or brackish water. The common name is typically used to refer to edible oysters. True oysters are members of the family Ostreidae. This family includes the edible oysters, which mainly belong to the genera Ostrea, Crassostrea, Ostreola and Saccostrea. Examples include the European Oyster (known as the Native Oyster in Britain), Eastern oyster, Olympia oyster, Pacific oyster, Sydney rock oyster, and the Wellfleet oyster.

Oysters are filter feeders, drawing water in over their gills through the beating of cilia. Suspended plankton and particles are trapped in the mucus of a gill, and from there are transported to the mouth, where they are eaten, digested and expelled as faeces or pseudofaeces. Oysters feed most actively at temperatures above 10°C. An oyster can filter up to 5 litres of water per hour.

In addition to their gills, oysters can also exchange gases across their mantle, which is lined with many small, thin-walled blood vessels. A small, three-chambered heart, lying under the adductor muscle, pumps colourless blood to all parts of the body. At the same time, two kidneys, located on the underside of the muscle, remove waste products from the blood. While some oysters have two sexes (European Oyster & Olympia Oyster), their reproductive organs contain both eggs and sperm. Because of this, it is technically possible for an oyster to fertilize its own egg. The gonads surround the digestive organs, and are made up of sex cells, branching tubules and connective tissue.

Humans have been consuming oysters since prehistoric times, as attested by midden mounds of discarded oyster shells found in coastal areas around the globe. In the United Kingdom, the town of Whitstable is noted for oyster farming from beds on the Kentish Flats that have been used since Roman times. Indeed, the Romans prized the native British oyster for its flavour and texture.

In the United Kingdom, the native variety (Ostrea edulis) is still held to be the finest, requiring five years to mature. They are prized for their unique tannic seawater flavour, sometimes described as dry and metallic, and are more expensive than other American oysters. The flavour is considered excellent for eating raw on the half shell. The species once dominated European oyster production but disease, pollution, and overfishing sharply reduced the harvest. Today Pacific oysters, Crassostrea gigas, account for more than 75 percent of Europe’s oyster production. Indeed, in British markets sales are currently dominated by the larger Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) and rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) species which are farmed year round.

Fresh oysters must be alive just before consumption or cooking. There is only one criterion: the oyster must be capable of tightly closing its shell. Open oysters should be tapped on the shell; a live oyster will close up and is safe to eat. Oysters which are open and unresponsive are dead and must be discarded. Some dead oysters, or oyster shells which are full of sand may be closed. These make a distinctive noise when tapped, and are known as clackers.

Opening oysters requires some considerable skill. The preferred method is to use a special knife (called an oyster knife, a variant of a shucking knife), with a short and thick blade about 5cm long. While there are different methods to open an oyster (which sometimes depend on the type of oyster), the following is one commonly accepted oyster shucking method. Insert the blade, with moderate force and vibration if necessary, at the hinge between the two valves. Then twist the blade until there is a slight pop. Then slide the blade upward to cut the adductor muscle which holds the shell closed. Inexperienced shuckers can apply too much force, which can result in injury if the blade slips. Heavy gloves are necessary: apart from the knife, the shell itself can be razor sharp. Professional shuckers require less than 3 seconds to do the deed.

If the oyster has a particularly soft shell, the knife can be inserted instead in the side-door, about halfway along one side where the oyster lips widen and there is a slight indentation.

Oysters have been cultured for well over a century. Two methods are commonly used: release and bagging. In both cases oysters are cultivated onshore to the size of spat, when they can attach themselves to a substrate. They may be allowed to mature further to form seed oysters. In either case they are then placed in the water to mature. The release technique involves distributing the spat throughout existing oyster beds allowing them to mature naturally to be collected like wild oysters. Bagging has the cultivator putting spat in racks or bags and keeping them above the bottom. Harvesting involves simply lifting the bags or rack to the surface and removing the mature oysters. The latter method prevents losses to some predators, but is more expensive.

The word 'oyster' is first attested in English in the 14th century cookbook, The Forme of Cury. The word ultimately derives from the Old French oistre (coming into English from Norman French). The Old French word being derived from Latin ostrea, the feminine form of ostreum, which is the Latinization of the Greek ὄστρεον (ostreon), 'oyster'.

Recipes including oysters can be found in almost all recipe books from Apicius' De Re Coquinaria right through the Forme of Cury, to Tudor and Elizabethan, Stuart, Georgian and Victorian cookbooks. In Britain and the US use of oysters for food reached a peak in Victorian times where oysters were cheap enough for even the poorest to be able to afford them. As a result, oysters were included in a whole range of Victorian recipes. This, of course, led to an inevitable decline in oyster beds, which made oysters scarce and increased the prices. Today, oysters are considered more of a luxury food. Historically they have been long considered as aphrodisiacs.

Aficionados insist that they’re best eaten raw, perhaps with freshly ground black pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice or a drop of Tabasco sauce. However, they can be eaten smoked, boiled, baked, fried, roasted, stewed, canned, pickled, steamed, broiled (grilled) or used in a variety of drinks. Interestingly oysters are low in food energy (a dozen raw oysters contain only 110 calories) but they are high in zinc, iron, calcium, and vitamin A.

Only use oysters that are tightly shut in their shells or that close when tapped. Any oysters that stay open are dead and should be thrown away.