Mussel Soups

Mussels make some of the most delicious seafood soups because the briny liquid they release is so flavorful. When I make mussel soup, I always seem to end up with a lot of mussels and a relatively small amount of the liquid needed as the base for the soup. There are several ways to get around this. You can serve the soup with tons of mussels, but then it becomes more stew than soup, and there’s some-thing cloying and monotonous about eating a big bowl of mussels already out of their shells with just a little bit of liquid. One classic method is to combine the mussel steaming liquid with fish broth, which is relatively bland, to stretch it. But this diminishes the briny mussel character of the soup. Some recipes suggest puréeing some of the mussels and adding them to the soup. This method thickens the soup and uses up the extra mussels, but it gives the soup a rough texture and colors it dull gray. My solution is a bit more circuitous and requires extra planning. Days, weeks, or even months before I make the soup, I make a pot of moules à la marinière and store the liquid in the refrigerator, where it will last for 2 or 3 days, or in the freezer, where it will last for several months. I then arrange the cooked mussels in their bottom shells, nestle them into some crumpled aluminum foil on a sheet pan, dollop them with parsley and garlic butter (the same butter used for snails) and sometimes a little chopped almond for texture, and broil them. I serve them as a first course (Hot Broiled Mussels). No one misses the cooking liquid.