Summer Beer Mussels
Baxter Brewing Company’s Summer Celsius has been my beer of choice for the past two months. When I can get it! I can always get their Pamola Pale ale(which is also great), but when I am looking for the summer Celsius, I am lucky if I find it. Since the first time I tried the beer, I wanted to make a recipe to pair with it, because the beer is brewed with two of my favorite ingredients ever, lemongrass and lime leaf. Just to be clear: the other three companies of “sellout week” contacted me about writing a recipe for them. I did this one on my own.
Lemongrass and lime leaf. I consider myself lucky to know where to purchase these items, because for years of my life I would search endlessly to no avail.
Quick saute with the ingredients before the mussels go in. Mussels are super easy to cook, I don’t know why more people don’t do it!
Beer to deglaze the pan.
Most of my mussels opened. The ones that didn’t got tossed.
So tasty! This is one of my favorite things that I have made in awhile.
When you pair food with wine or beer, sometimes you want to go with similar flavors, and sometimes you want to go opposite. Obviously this is similar flavors to the beer and they complemented one another perfectly.
Plenty of bread to soak up the extra sauce. I can’t get enough mussels right now, so you could imagine that this dish really hit the spot.
Summer Beer Mussels
Ingredients
- 2 Cloves Garlic
- 2 Limes
- 8 Stalks Lemongrass
- 3 Thai Red Chiles
- 3 Shallots
- 5 Keffir Lime Leaves
- 1 Can Baxter Summer Celsius
- 1 Pound Mussels
Instructions
- Slice shallots. Chop up lemongrass like this. Cut chiles into rounds. Thinly julienne lime leaf. Clean mussels by quickly rinsing in cold water and removing any hairs. If the mussels are open, tap lightly. If they close within the next minute or so, they are still good, but if they stay open toss them out cause they are dead. In a very small amount of oil, cook the shallots down for about 3 minutes. Add the chilies, lemongrass, lime zest, garlic, and most of the lime leaves, and cook another minute or two. Add the whole beer to deglaze the pan. Add the mussels and cook until opened. If any don’t open, throw them out! Add the juice from the 2 limes, and pour into a bowl. Top with remaining lime leaf, and serve with bread.
I’m trying to understand your thought process here “Hey, my sister is moving across the country. I should make something using her two favorite things (beer and mussels) ONE WEEK AFTER SHE MOVES.” Baxter is not available in San Francisco, and we are not friends anymore. Also beer and mussels sounds like something you should of posted during bro week.
I could never find kaffir lime leaves either… so I bought a tree! It’s about 2-3 feet tall, I grow it indoors here in MA. I freeze the leaves when I prune it (they freeze surprisingly well).
I ordered mine online for something like $70 (not cheap but it’s a good looking plant anyway), I wonder if Mahoney’s or other good garden stores could order them.
tl;dr – can’t find it? grow it.
Hey Dan – Thanks so much for using Celsius and for all the praise. The muscles sound delicious (I’m jealous)! And I promise Celsius will be much easier to find next summer!
Cheers,
Luke
I was just saying to myself gee, self, it’s been a long time since you cooked mussels. These look great! Where do you buy your lemongrass and lime leaf?
Adrienne –
Super88 NEVER has lime leaf and usually doesn’t even have lemongrass
H-Mart in Burlington is my favorite store in the world and I could talk about it here for hours, but to answer your question, they always have lemongrass, and USUALLY have lime leaf, i’d say about 80% of the time.
Kam Man in South Bay Plaza (I think there is one in Quincy too) ALWAYS has BOTH lemongrass and lime leaf, and it’s way cheaper. I don’t love this store as much as I love H-mart, but it’s all around cheaper. for example the mussels in this recipe were 2.50 a pound, and limes are 10 for a dollar. Today Avocados were 5 for 20 dollars! 5 avocados for 2 dollars!!! (yes I went there this morning)
I’m lucky to have plenty of “weird” grocery stores within 5 miles of our house, so all of these things are readily available to me! Well, maybe everything but the beer =) But I’ll be on the lookout for out!
Hahahaha Allie.
Guess you’ll just have to make it yourself.
We never had a last perler bead dinner party either… 🙂