Grape snails in Burgundy: recipes for gourmets

Snails in Burgundy are a famous delicacy, which is very popular in many countries of the world. The first Greeks were the first to use these cephalopods as food. Today they are the main suppliers of these rare animals to different countries of South-Eastern and Central Europe.

Classic Edition

Today, "snails in Burgundy" are considered one of the main traditional dishes of French cuisine. There are different options for its preparation. The simplest method requires the following mandatory ingredients:

• For 36 canned snails you need 250 grams of butter, ground black pepper, 4 cloves of garlic, 2 stems of shallots, 4 tablespoons of chopped parsley and a little salt.

In order to prepare such a dish as "snails in Burgundy", you need a certain skill:

1. First they should be washed in cold water, and then gently spread on a paper towel.
2. After drying from each sink, remove the meat. Black clot on the end must necessarily be cut off.
3. The shell itself should be thoroughly washed and dried.
4. Butter must first slightly soften, and then add to it the crushed ingredients provided by the recipe. The amount of salt and pepper is taken to taste.
5. Add to the received weight the meat of snails.
6. Prepared mixture stuffed shells.
7. Fold them in a mold and send them to the oven for 7 minutes.

This time is enough to make a fragrant oily mixture well baked.

Boiled chicken meat

Burgundy snails are always prepared in the same way. The difference is only in the composition of the filling, which is used for stuffing. One way is to provide the following set of products:

• On 0,6 kg of boiled meat of snails 30 grams of onions, 100 grams of grated cheese, 40 grams of butter, 2 cloves of garlic, 15 grams of parsley, 50 grams of bread crumbs and black pepper at the tip of the knife.

In this case, everything starts with a plate:

1. First, snails must be boiled.
2. Then it is necessary to remove the meat from them, and the shells to boil for half an hour in a soda solution. After that, they should be doused with cold water and dried.
3. For the preparation of the filling first of all, all the ingredients must be crushed. This is best done with a sharp knife.
4. Next, the onion is saved in oil, and then alternately add the rest of the food to it.
5. In the prepared mixture, add a little broth, in which the snails were cooked. The remaining liquid must be boiled until thick.
6. Inside each shell pour a little broth, put a piece of boiled meat and cover the top with cooked stuffing.

Stuffed billets should be baked in the oven for 15 minutes, until the mixture inside the sink is covered with a ruddy crust.

Obligatory conditions

To get the desired result, you need to know clearly how to make grape snails. To begin with, it should be noted that the mollusks must necessarily undergo pre-treatment.

This is a fairly long process, but without it, it is better not to use cephalopods for food. The only way out in this case is frozen or canned snails. Usually they are sold in special sealed packages. There are over a hundred different options for how to make grape snails. But all of them can be combined in four main ways. This: snails fried on a grill (grill), stuffed with fragrant oil, baked in sauce and cooked in burning brandy. Each method is good in its own way, so everything depends on the individual taste. The main rule is that cooked shellfish should be eaten only when hot. After cooling, their meat not only loses its taste, but also becomes quite tough. Such a dish will not bring pleasure to anyone.

Main recipes

In France, there are two main regions where the largest snails are found. The recipe for their preparation is called by the name of the area: Alsace and Burgundy. The essence of the method in both cases is usually reduced to the following actions:

1. First, the sinks are treated.
2. Then the shellfish is removed from the shells.
3. Shells are carefully cleaned.
4. After that, the meat of gastropods is put back into the house together with the pre-cooked stuffing.
5. The design is baked in an oven at high temperature.

If everything is done correctly, the result will be very delicate real French snails. The recipe, as a rule, contains a set of fragrant herbs, which help to shade the unusual taste of the fillet of a mollusc soaked in flavored oil. As a mandatory addition to this dish, you must serve a good white wine. And it does not have to be expensive. It can even be ordinary young wine. The main thing is that the taste should be pleasant to the person who drinks it.

Shellfish with vegetable filling

From a variety of options, each cook himself chooses the way he likes to cook delicacy "snails in Burgundy". The recipe may contain the following ingredients:

• For 150 grams of snails 4 tablespoons of flour, a glass of apple cider vinegar, 200 grams of carrots, a liter of white wine, 300 grams of onions, 4 cloves of garlic, half a kilogram of butter, a little salt, fresh parsley and thyme.

With this set of components, the following technology should be observed:

1. Snails boil in salted water for 6 minutes, and then wash well and dry.
2. Carefully remove the meat, combine it in a clean container and pour water with wine.
3. Vegetables, along with herbs, crumble and add to the butter. To make a homogeneous mixture, it is best to use a blender.
4. Meat of snails finely chopped. Pieces should be of medium size.
5. Washed shells stuffed with meat. The rest of the space is filled with prepared oil.

Before serving snails on the table should be put in the oven for 5-10 minutes. The temperature inside the chamber must be at least 200-220 degrees.

Tastes differ

Not everyone today has had the chance to try the delicacy of the "snails in Burgundy". The testimonies of those lucky people who still could afford it, only confirm the opinion that each person has his own taste.

People who are not accustomed to delicacies from seafood, are unlikely to appreciate this exotic dish. After all, for Russians, shellfish were never considered to be food. It is this circumstance that causes many to be apprehensive about an unfamiliar product. But lovers of experiments can gladly satisfy their curiosity. Moreover, now such a dish in frozen form is made by companies for processing seafood. Before using them, you just need to send them to the microwave or an oven for a short time. Some believe that the taste of such mollusks resembles something in between mushrooms and mussels. Nevertheless, there are almost no frank negative reviews, except for those for whom it is purely psychologically difficult to eat a snail.

Aromatic additive

Sometimes famous snails are cooked without shells. With this method, the dish consists of two main components: mollusc fillets and dressings. The sauce for "Burgundy snails" in this case (based on 25 shellfish without lodges) can be prepared from the following products:

• 100 grams of butter, 3 cloves of garlic, 50 grams of Parmesan cheese, salt, nutmeg and parsley (at your discretion).

Then the whole process is reduced to the following steps:

1. Mix the softened butter with chopped garlic, salt, nutmeg and chopped greens.
2. Put the meat of snails in special shapes.
3. Then cover it with a layer of cooked fragrant mass.
4. Sprinkle with grated cheese.
5. Put the form in the oven for 10 minutes.

Before eating, you need to take care that there is a good white wine on the table and a loaf of fresh French baguette. Without these important additions, even a properly prepared sauce will not give the desired result. To achieve an ideal taste, you can only have all the necessary ingredients.

With your own hands

If you want to do the entire cooking procedure from start to finish, you need to clearly understand how to eat snails in Burgundy at home, and what you need to do for this. First of all, it must be taken into account that these mollusks during their lifetime eat even those plants that are harmful to humans. Therefore, immediately after collection, they can not be eaten. Snails should "fast" for a while. To do this, they should be placed in a pot, pouring a little flour on the bottom as a meal. After 10 days, shells with shellfish should be taken out and held for a couple of hours in a separate container filled with salt. This will help remove unwanted mucus. Then you can just start to follow the chosen recipe. You can bake snails in two ways:

1. In a special form called "escargotnitsa". The name comes from the French word "escargo", which in translation means "snail grape."
2. On a baking tray, sprinkled with salt and covered with foil.

Ready snails are served to the table portionwise in separate shallow plates. For food, a special small fork with two prongs, a scoop or an ordinary toothpick is usually used. Each piece should be washed down with white wine. A snack you can dunk the baguette pulp in butter with vegetables and greens.