Mussels marinara is a popular Italian dish made with fresh mussels, linguine or fettuccine pasta, and a meatless tomato sauce. The sauce is made with white wine, crushed canned tomatoes, garlic, and herbs. Fresh mussels should be used and cooked until they open, and the sauce can be prepared separately or added to the mussels. Frozen cooked mussels can be used as a substitute, but the flavor and texture will be different. The dish is typically served with warm crusty bread and a white wine.
Cozze alla marinara is a quickly prepared mussel dish, a clam-like crustacean, served with pasta in a meatless tomato sauce. It’s a staple in many Italian restaurants, but it’s also a favorite in many households because it’s a flavorful and nutritious meal that’s cheaply and quickly prepared. As with most dishes, however, there are a few guidelines that should be observed in preparation. For example, the pasta used – preferably linguine or fettucine – should be cooked al dente.
Salsa marinara – marinara sauce in Italian – is a very simple sauce made with white wine, crushed canned tomatoes, garlic, herbs, and sometimes onions. Compared to tomato sauces that simmer for hours, marinara sauce cooks fairly quickly, usually with a brighter orange-red color than longer-cooking tomato sauces. Some marinara sauces are made with anchovies for a fishy flavor, while others, intended for use with seafood, sometimes include a small amount of lemon juice.
The mussels used in the mussel marinara should be as fresh as possible; ideally, they should be purchased within seven days of the collection date, which is usually printed on the packaging. Like clams, mussels are bivalves that live inside two-sided shells; unlike clams, which are mobile, mussels prefer to attach themselves to some stationary object. When harvested, mussels generally have a “beard” of a stringy substance that the mussels use to attach to docks, rocks or other structures in the water. This beard must be removed from each mussel; the most effective method is to scrub each mussel with a wire brush and cut off any remaining strings with a sharp knife.
Some mussels marinara recipes call for the sauce to be prepared first, to which fresh, cleaned mussels are added. The pot is covered for a few moments and the mussels are steamed. Mussels that do not open in the steaming process are removed and discarded.
Another approach is to steam the mussels first, discarding the unopened shells, then add all the marinara sauce ingredients, cooking it briefly to let the flavors blend before serving over the pasta. This second method can be clunky when trying to mix the different sauce ingredients between the mussel shells. For this reason, some cooks will make marinara sauce, portioning out mussels on a bed of pasta and pouring marinara sauce over them.
Frozen cooked mussels are an adequate substitute for steamed fresh, but there is a noticeable difference in both the flavor and texture of the mussel meat. Cooks using this approach should keep in mind that cooked mussels, like oysters, are very delicate. If overloaded with sauce, such as boiled or stirred too vigorously, they can fall apart. Sauces prepared marinara can also add to the convenience of the dish, but there is a significant difference in flavor.
Mussels marinara can be served as a single dish or with a light salad. It should be served with lots of warm crusty bread to clean up the sauce and a nice white wine. The thoughtful host will always provide large empty bowls to collect the empty mussel shells.
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