Steamed Mussels in Tomato Cream Sauce
Quick to cook, oh-so-perfect mussels in the best cream sauce ever. Serve with a baguette for dipping!
Steamed mussels are so fancy. SO SO FANCY. But they are also incredibly easy and quick to prepare, and you can serve to guests with all the street cred of slaving away in the kitchen. The only hard part is cleaning up the mussels prior to cooking, but don’t worry – with a few steps, that’s really easy too.
You’ll want to run the mussels under cold water first, rinsing and scrubbing away the debris like seaweed and sand, and removing the “beard” as needed. The beard is exactly how it sounds – a thin brown string that can be removed from the hinged end of the shell. You can use your fingers or a knife, working carefully, for those pesky beards.
Once cleaned and debearded, these bad boys are ready to go. Ready to swim in a heavenly garlicky, tomato-based white wine cream sauce. A cream sauce so good we’ll need all the crusty bread for dipping purposes. And I really do mean all the bread (the best part of the dish, really).
- 3 pounds fresh mussels
- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 shallots, diced
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
- ⅛ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, optional
- 1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
- 1 cup chicken stock
- ⅓ cup dry white wine
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- ½ cup heavy cream
- ¼ cup basil leaves, torn
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley leaves