Eating Garden Snails

The garden snail, Helix aspersa, came to Britain with the Romans, who loved to eat them, they may have come earlier, in the Bronze age, but didn’t spread much. It’s the snail most cultivated for gourmet food and is known as petit gris. This site follows up a piece on the One Show (BBC1) in April 2009. It has information on how to prepare garden snails, for cooking and eating, of recipes, all in the March Archive, more on Purging in May Archive. To see my comments with slide show, click on it.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Purge for a week in damp weather!

I planned to make a snail meal, and put a number to purge for 2 days. They were all inside their shells when I took them to cook. BUT they were not all sealed with an operculum. As I washed them prior to putting into boiling water, some started emerging from their shells. These I returned to the vivarium, and only cooked those that were fully asleep. I think it was the warm damp weather that kept them from dormancy. In future I will leave them for longer, a week should be fine, I have seen recommended before. The meal was good!
The snails I chose were not the biggest, as I decided to breed from them. I have two breeding setups, but so far, I have seen no sign of lovemaking. But they hopefully get it together when I'm asleep!