Vietnamese style grilled mussels with butter, spring onion and salted peanuts… Prepare yourself for a finger licking good seafood treat! Mussels and peanuts? It definitely works!
Time for some fusion cooking then today.
These Vietnamese grilled mussels remind me of our trip to Mui Ne in Vietnam.
It must have a been a couple of years ago now. We had a dish there that we ordered as much as we could, it only contained scallops instead of mussels.
Mui Ne
I wrote a blog post about our visit to Mui Ne and our struggle to find good food at first. Until the moment we stumbled upon this seaside shack serving the freshest fish and seafood on the barbecue for dinner.
Even alligator!
Or was that just a prop to attract tourists? Who knows, it looks quite real to me. And it smelled so great. The place wasn’t posh, on the contrary. Concrete benches and tables on a floor full of sand, a tiny cluttered kitchen.
Don’t come here when you suffer from OCD.
Easy Grilled Mussels Vietnamese Style
So here we are again.
Back in Belgium.
And we desperately want to make something similar to the scallops we tasted back in Vietnam. Just to enjoy that wonderful explosive flavor and taste again.
There’s one big problem though: I just can’t find any scallops here anywhere in our town. So in the end I bought a couple of handfuls of mussels.
We grilled them, added the butter, peanuts and all the other delicious toppings.
Peanuts
And I have to say: we were not disappointed at all!
It is true that the creaminess of the peanuts and the butter is best in combination with the sweetness of scallops. But this mussel version was nevertheless a surprising hit as well.
And a great alternative.
I grilled the mussels, the original dish was prepared on a barbecue.
Try out those scallops as well!
Enjoy!
Easy Grilled Mussels Vietnamese Style Recipe
Vietnamese grilled mussels with butter, spring onion and salted peanuts!
- 10 fresh mussels
- 2 medium fresh spring onions
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- a handful salted peanuts
- fish sauce
- pepper
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Rinse the mussels under cold running tap water. Clean them using a sharp knife. Remove any hairy strings protruding from the inside or anything barnacle like. Then rinse the cleaned mussels again and let them drain on a clean kitchen towel.
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Place them on a baking tray and grill the mussels under a hot grill for 5 minutes until they are open. Then with a sharp knife remove one shell and cut the mussel loose from the remaining shell.
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Chop up the salted peanuts finely. Slice the spring onions finely. Drizzle the mussels with the melted butter and a drop of fish sauce. Sprinkle with the spring onion and season with a tiny pinch of pepper.
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Grill the mussels again for another 2 minutes. Then place them on a plate, sprinkle with the chopped salted peanuts and serve hot.