The first step: grow in clean water. After buying river mussels home, do not rush to cook them. Instead, put them in clean water and add some salt in the water. Leave them for about two to three days. Wait until they have spit out all the sand and mud before cooking them. The umami flavor will be particularly outstanding. .

Step 2: Cut open and remove the meat. Take out the raised river mussels and rinse them with clean water.

Tip to cut open the mussel meat: first hold the mussel with your left hand, with the mouth of the mussel facing up, then use your right hand to hold a knife from the water outlet of the river mussel, close to the meat shell wall on one side Insert into the body to a depth of about 1/3, scrape off the shell-sucking muscle of the river mussel, then pull out the knife, and use the same method to scrape off the shell-sucking muscle on the other end, open the shell, and the mussel meat will be intact. Take it out.

If you don’t like to use a knife, there is another easy way. Just pour the mussels into a pot, add water and boil, so that the mussels' meat and shells will automatically separate.

Step 3: Trim the meat. First, remove the grayish-yellow gills and the mud intestines behind them. Cheek removal is natural and there is nothing to say. That big piece of greenish-yellow stuff is completely edible and doesn’t need to be removed. All the blue turbidity in the intestines should be removed. Many people use the method of squeezing, but in fact, this cannot be done. Because only some of the dirt near the small holes can be squeezed out, but the dirt in the intestines of the entire river mussel cannot be squeezed out.

The correct approach is as follows:

Many times, through the outer layer of the mussel, you can see circles of black and blue sludge-like dirt inside. , this is the dirt left in the intestines. The intestines must be cut open with scissors and rinsed with clean water before they can be washed clean.

As for the direction of the intestines, sometimes it can be seen from the outside, but many times, the outer layer of the entire river mussel looks very bright, with no black and blue stripes at all, and the turbidity is not discovered until it is opened. In this case, you can cut from the small hole and cut along a certain curvature. If you really can’t figure it out, you can only cut randomly. In short, you have to cut open the entire intestine and remove all the dirt inside. Removing it is the cleanest thing.

Of course, there are intestines not only in the inner layer of the clam, but also from the small hole to the outside. If it is not broken at the small hole, the intestines will be continuous from the inner layer to the outer layer. These should all be cleaned.

Step 4: Clean the clam meat. Rub the picked clam meat with salt for a few times, wash off the mucus, float it into the water again, scrape off the rot with your fingers, and then rinse it with clean water.

After the above processing, you will see that the white mussel meat is plump, thick, fresh and shiny. In this way, the mussel meat has been truly cleaned, and everyone can safely use it for cooking. However, before cooking the clam meat, the legs of the clam should be knocked as loose as possible until they are soft, so as not to harden them after being cooked.