Barbecued mussels with garlic parsley lemon butter

SERVES 1

This mixture is enough for 10 mussels. If you want to make more, simply increase the ingredients accordingly, allowing 10 mussels per person.

25 g (1 oz) butter

1 garlic clove, crushed

juice of ½ lemon

1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

10 mussels

Melt the butter in a small saucepan, then add the garlic, lemon juice and parsley — give it a good mix and it’s ready.

Preheat your barbecue to high. Scrub the mussels and pull out the hairy beards. Discard any broken mussels, or open ones that don’t close when tapped on the work surface. Rinse well. Place the mussels over the flames and let them cook until they open. Once they open, spoon some of the butter mixture into each mussel so that it cooks in all those lovely flavours. You may need to assist your mussels to open wide enough which is fine but do not force any open that remain tightly shut — throw them out.

Keep an eye on the heat of the barbecue — you want your mussels to open but sometimes it can get too hot and burn the shell. Also, if your mussels are really fresh they will still have seawater in them. This will do two things — provide enough salt so you won’t need to add salt to the butter mix and steam the mussel inside before it opens. Be careful when taking the mussels off the barbecue as you don’t want to spill all of the delicious juice your mussel has been cooked in.

The best way to eat them is to carefully pry off one side of the mussel shell and then use the shell with the mussel sitting in it like a spoon — eat and make loud slurping noises!

You can use black or green-lipped mussels for this dish. I was lucky enough to get them straight out of Port Phillip Bay where they grow black mussels. Try to buy large mussels as they will not only be easier to cook but easier to add the butter.