Mussels with Vegetables in Tomato Sauce

Name: Mussels with Vegetables in Tomato Sauce
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: Bulgarian cuisine
Ingredients: Mussels 300 g; Onion 1 onion; Carrot 1 onion; Red bell pepper 2 peppers; Garlic 1-2 cloves; Tomato (paste) 1 tbsp; Olive oil 3 tbsp; Salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste

Mussels are a superb delicacy, a gift of the sea, and incredibly tasty when cooked well. I have to admit, I have never once been disappointed by a mussel dish. Oddly enough, the best mussel dishes come from small restaurants close to the sea.

What can I say, mussels are delicious. They have a delicate flavor, plenty of trace elements (not always beneficial, unfortunately) and lots of protein. Scientists prove how healthy mussels are, and many people consider them almost a natural Viagra and eat mussel salad for that reason.

These days mussels are not gathered wild in the sea but farmed. Many of you have surely heard the term “mussel farm”. Far out at sea, where the water is clean and free of suspended sand, ropes are lowered into the water, and the mussels live on them. They live, filter the water and grow. Then they are harvested like apples from a tree.

We have eaten mussels every which way. Mussels fried in batter, and pilaf with mussels, and risotto with mussels, and pizza with mussels, and pasta with mussels, all sorts of options. And what delicious mussel soups there are!!! Mussels stewed in a sauce are also wonderful. Sauces are an interesting thing in general, and I would not be wrong to say that half of all main dishes are cooked with sauces. They are either cooked in a sauce or served with one.

Let's make mussels with a sauce and vegetables. This dish is perfectly good on its own, or it can become an excellent chunky sauce for pasta or rice. Potatoes will be quite “happy” with it too. By the way, mussel soup with cream is something I recommend to everyone, it is tasty and unusual. I explained in detail how to prepare mussels properly in the article on how to cook mussels.

More with mussels

Mexican-Style Mussels with Rice

Mexican-Style Seafood Rice

Pilaf with Mussels

Fried Mussels in Batter

Warm Mussel and Red Bean Salad

Ingredients

2 servings

Mussels 300 g
Onion 1 onion
Carrot 1 onion
Red bell pepper 2 peppers
Garlic 1-2 cloves
Tomato (paste) 1 tbsp
Olive oil 3 tbsp
Salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste

Step-by-step recipe

Turn on cook modeKeeps your screen from turning off while the recipe is open

It is best to buy mussels already shelled, just the meat, and frozen, rather than in the shell, which means extra fuss and no guarantee they are good. One more tip: buy mussel meat as a loose deep-frozen product, not in vacuum plastic packaging. Unfortunately, packaging is a black box. It is hard to know in advance what you will find inside.
Frozen mussel meat does not need to be thawed first.
Peel the onion and carrot and chop them finely with a knife. Though there is no need to chop too small.
Heat 3 tbsp of olive oil in a frying pan. Let it heat until a white wisp of smoke appears and you can smell a pleasant aroma. Fry the chopped onion and carrot in the oil until soft.
Remove the stems and seeds from the red bell pepper and cut it into small pieces. Add the pepper to the onion and carrot, add the minced garlic and salt.
Stew over low heat, covered, for 10-12 minutes, without (!) adding water. The vegetables will release enough moisture as they cook.
Add 1-2 pinches of ground nutmeg and season with pepper.
Add the tomato. There are options here. Of course, the best choice is the flesh of fresh tomatoes, if they are in season, or canned chopped tomatoes. In practice, it often turns out that it is out of season and there are no canned tomatoes. So either add 1 cup of good tomato juice, or 1 heaping spoonful of tomato paste diluted in boiled water. Considering that tomato juice is almost always reconstituted from the very same paste, it comes to the same thing. You cannot spoil mussels with vegetables with tomato!
Stew everything, covered, for 15 minutes.
Add the frozen mussels, stir, and bring the mussels in the sauce to a boil.
Stew the mussels in the sauce, covered, for 5 minutes, then remove the lid and let the excess liquid boil away.
The mussels in a sauce with vegetables are ready.
You can sit down to breakfast right away, just mussels in sauce with fresh bread. I recommend sprinkling with chopped parsley.
But it is even tastier to use the mussels in a vegetable sauce as an addition to Italian pasta. Boil 250 g of pasta, preferably small and compact: cappelletti, farfalle, pipe, canneroni, ruote. Then mix the mussels in sauce with the pasta.
Serve mussels in sauce hot only.