Green-Lipped Mussels Steamed in Cider (NZ Recipe)

Q: What do you serve with green-lipped mussels?

Bread for the juices and lime wedges, as the Shearers do. Martin Bosley also puts good crusty bread on the side. For a cold platter, he serves them chilled with a dip of 1 teaspoon of miso paste mixed through a cup of store-bought mayo.

Green-lipped mussels are New Zealand’s native mussel, Perna canaliculus, found only in New Zealand and sold under the trademark name Greenshell (Seafood New Zealand). They grow far larger than blue mussels and carry a green lip inside the shell. This recipe follows Nikki and Jordan Shearer’s method: live mussels steamed in a bottle of apple cider over butter, ginger, chili and makrut lime leaf, then finished with lime (Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations).

Prep Time: 20 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 4

Difficulty: Easy | Calories: ~280 per serving

How Are Green-Lipped Mussels Different from Blue Mussels?

Start with size. The industry body’s species page gives a length of 10–15 cm for green-lipped mussels, reaching 23 cm. New Zealand’s own blue mussel is dark blue-black, often chalky white around the hinge, and only five to seven centimetres long. It isn’t farmed (Seafood New Zealand). Farmed green-lipped mussels are usually harvested at around 8–10 cm of shell, 18 to 30 months after the spat went onto the ropes (Earth Sciences New Zealand).

Then the colour. The outside of the shell is dark green, often streaked with yellow, red or brown. Inside, it is iridescent with a green lip. The meat of mature males is creamy white and that of females apricot-orange, so expect both colours in the pot (Talley’s).

The farms sit in the Marlborough Sounds, Coromandel, Golden Bay and Stewart Island, where the mussels grow on lines suspended from ropes above the seabed (Seafood New Zealand). Writing in Cuisine, chef Martin Bosley describes the farms as using no feeds, growth meds or antibiotics, “just ropes and patience”, with mussels harvested at about two years old (Cuisine).

In the kitchen, bigger shells mean fewer mussels per kilo and more room in the pot. The Shearers’ 1.5 kg serves four (Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations). Pick your widest lidded pot so the shells can open without jamming against the lid. At the table, Bosley sees no place for cutlery: the shells, still joined, act as natural tongs to help free the meat (Cuisine).

Live or Frozen Half-Shell: Which Are You Cooking?

In New Zealand, Martin Bosley buys his live, and cheap: about $7.50 per kg, he writes. Mussels have a 10-day shelf life after harvest if stored correctly. His method: tip them into a colander set inside a larger bowl, cover with a tea towel, put a cupful of ice on top and refrigerate. Some will relax and open a little in the cold (Cuisine), which is why the tap test in Step 1 matters.

Frozen mussels are a different product. Talley’s harvests from Tasman Bay and the Marlborough Sounds, then heat treats and snap freezes its mussels. It sells them whole, on the half shell, as meat, or marinated (Talley’s). Read the pack before you cook. Turner New Zealand says its whole-shell mussels are precooked in the pouch, so it gives them just 1 minute at high heat and warns against overcooking (Turner New Zealand).

To use cooked half-shell mussels here, thaw them in the fridge and skip Step 1. Make the broth through Step 2, add the cider and bring it to a boil. Lay the half shells in meat side up, cover, and heat only until the meat is hot through. If the pack says raw, cook them until the meat is firm, as below. A recipe on Aquaculture New Zealand’s site steams frozen half-shell mussels until just cooked, then serves them cold under a salsa with ginger, chili, lime and coriander (Aquaculture New Zealand).

How Do You Know When They’re Cooked?

New Zealand Food Safety tells people to cook mussels thoroughly, at above 65 degrees C for one minute. That destroys any Vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacterium found naturally in seawater. Its rule of thumb: the shells pop open when boiled or steamed, and the mussel inside is firm to the touch (Scoop, New Zealand Food Safety release). The 2021 warning was about raw mussels. The mussels sold in plastic pottles are cooked and marinated, and are not affected (Scoop, New Zealand Food Safety release).

Open is not always done. In Australian steaming tests, an average of 1.9% of mussels lifted out as soon as they opened had not had enough heat to cook them adequately (FRDC). So check the meat as well as the shell. The FRDC cooks took mussels out once the meat had coagulated and shrunk from the shell margins (FRDC). A soft, wobbly one needs another minute under the lid.

The video above skips the cider. In the Marlborough Sounds, Alex Giesen sets a pot of freshly harvested mussels on the grate of an outdoor grill, closes the lid and lets them steam in their own juices. Once cooked, they get smoked organic salt with spices, chili flakes, kelp flakes, lemon zest and fresh herbs from the garden (Giesen Wines).

Ingredients for Green-Lipped Mussels

For the Mussels:

3 1/4 lb (1.5 kg) live green-lipped mussels

For the Broth:

3 1/2 tablespoons (50 g) butter
1 1/4-inch (3 cm) piece fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 red chili, seeded and finely chopped
2 makrut (kaffir) lime leaves, finely chopped
2 spring onions, sliced
1 bottle (11 fl oz / 330 ml) apple cider

To Finish:

2 limes

Step-by-Step Instructions

Step 1: Clean and Check the Mussels

1Scrub the mussels under cold running water and knock off any barnacles with the back of a knife. Pull off each beard by tugging it firmly towards the hinge. Throw out any mussel with a cracked or broken shell. If one is open, tap it sharply on the counter; keep it only if it closes.

Two hands pulling a dark, stringy beard from a closed green-lipped mussel with a dark green-brown shell and bright green edge, over a stainless-steel colander of wet, closed mussels beside a white sink — Step 1- Clean and Check the Mussels

Step 2: Soften the Aromatics

2Melt the butter in a wide, deep pot with a tight lid over medium heat. Add the ginger, garlic, chili and lime leaves and stir for about 1 minute, until they smell strongly but before the garlic colours.

A hand stirring finely chopped ginger, garlic, red chili and slivers of lime leaf with a wooden spoon in a thin layer of sizzling butter in a wide charcoal-grey cast-iron pot — Step 2- Soften the Aromatics

Step 3: Steam in Cider

3Add the spring onions and cider, turn the heat to high and tip in the mussels. Cover and cook for 2 minutes. Shake the pot with the lid held down, then cook 2 minutes more, or until the shells have opened and the meat inside is firm. Discard any mussels that have not opened.

A hand lifting the lid off the charcoal-grey pot as steam rises from opened green-lipped mussels with orange and cream meat in a pale cider broth flecked with spring onion and red chili — Step 3- Steam in Cider

Step 4: Finish with Lime

4Tip the mussels and all their juices into a large warmed bowl. Squeeze the juice of 1 lime over them and cut the other into wedges. Serve straight away, with a spare bowl on the table for the empty shells.

A hand squeezing half a lime over a white bowl of opened green-lipped mussels in buttery broth with spring onion, red chili and lime wedges on a wooden table — Step 4- Finish with Lime

Frequently Asked Questions

Should you throw away mussels that don’t open?

Cookery writers commonly say yes, and this recipe plays safe, but an Australian industry study called the rule unfounded for Australian farmed mussels. Nick Ruello’s 2004 report for the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation pried open 76 unopened mussels from five cooking batches and found all of them adequately cooked. Its advice is to wash and check mussels before cooking and discard any that are doubtful: all or almost all dead mussels have open shells that don’t close when tapped. The tests used Australian blue mussels, not green-lipped ones (FRDC).

Which way do you pull the beard off?

Towards the hinge, the pointed end of the shell, with a firm pull. Nikki and Jordan Shearer scrub their mussels under cold running water first, then pull the beards firmly towards the hinge (Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations). Martin Bosley gives them a sharp tug down towards the pointed end, and checks every shell for breaks and chips while knocking off barnacles (Cuisine).

Why are some green-lipped mussels orange and others cream?

The colour tells you the sex, not the quality. Mature males have creamy-white flesh and females apricot-orange, and Talley’s says both have the same flavour (Talley’s). Martin Bosley agrees that the colour has no effect on taste (Cuisine).

What do you serve with green-lipped mussels?

Bread for the juices and lime wedges, as the Shearers do (Motorhomes, Caravans & Destinations). Martin Bosley also puts good crusty bread on the side. For a cold platter, he serves them chilled with a dip of 1 teaspoon of miso paste mixed through a cup of store-bought mayo (Cuisine).