Spicy Steamed Mussels With 'Nduja Recipe

Spicy, funky Calabrian sausage is the perfect companion to briny, sweet, steamed mussels. And they come together in 20 minutes flat.

By
Sasha Marx
Sasha Marx
Senior Culinary Editor
Sasha is a senior culinary editor at Serious Eats. He has over a decade of professional cooking experience, having worked his way up through a number of highly regarded and award-winning restaurant kitchens, followed by years spent in test kitchens for food publications.
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Updated February 25, 2020
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Vicky Wasik

Why It Works

  • The high fat content of 'nduja allows it to easily meld and emulsify with the aromatics, white wine, and mussel liquor, lending the broth floral heat from the Calabrian chilies and meaty richness from the pork.
  • 'Nduja's salty, fermented tang complements the creamy sweetness of steamed mussels.
  • Affordable, quick-cooking mussels are perfect for easy weeknight meals, along with flavor-bomb ingredients with a long shelf life, like 'nduja.

If you took a poll asking home cooks to rank their favorite ingredients for putting together easy weeknight meals that don't break the bank, mussels probably wouldn't crack the top 10 on most peoples' lists. But they should! Fresh, farmed mussels are cheap, delicious, require very little prep, and you can have a steamy, brothy bowl of them on the dinner table—with plenty of charred toasted bread for dipping, of course—in 20 minutes. Sounds pretty great, right? If you'd rather peel and devein, or even worse, defrost, a bunch of shrimp instead, that's your journey.

As Kenji has pointed out before, mussels are "the easiest choose-your-own-adventure, one-pot meal around." For this mussel adventure, we paired them with another one of our favorite weeknight dinner flavor-bomb ingredients: 'nduja.

'Nduja is a spicy, spreadable fermented pork sausage that originated in the southern Italian region of Calabria. Most cured sausages have a three-to-one lean-meat-to-fat ratio, but 'nduja flips that ratio and boasts a three-to-one fat-to-meat ratio. This high fat content gives 'nduja its soft, spreadable texture and allows it to easily emulsify and meld into sauces, stews, and the like. 'Nduja brings plenty of floral heat from crushed Calabrian chilies, which comprise 30% of the sausage mixture, and it's also lightly smoked and fermented, giving the sausage great depth of flavor with a nice funky finish. All of that, along with its long shelf life, makes 'nduja a great ingredient to keep in your fridge to give recipes a flavor boost.

For this recipe, we start by lightly rendering 'nduja with shallots and garlic, before adding white wine and mussels to the mix. Slap a lid over the saucepan, crank up the heat, and a couple of minutes later, you're rewarded with perfectly steamed mussels that have opened up and released their flavorful, sweet, and briny liquor to form a spicy-savory broth with the 'nduja and white wine. A splash of lemon juice and a fistful of chopped parsley really ties the room together. Just make sure you have plenty toasted crusty bread on hand for dipping and dunking because that's probably the best part of a mussel feast.

Recipe Details

Spicy Steamed Mussels With 'Nduja Recipe

Active 10 mins
Total 20 mins
Serves 3 to 4 servings

Ingredients

For the Mussels:

  • 1 tablespoon (15ml) extra-virgin olive oil

  • 2 large shallots (3 ounces; 85g), thinly sliced

  • 2 garlic cloves (10g), thinly sliced

  • Kosher salt

  • 2 ounces (1/4 cup; 60g) 'nduja (see note)

  • 1 cup (240ml) dry white wine

  • 2 pounds (900g) mussels, scrubbed and debearded (see note)

  • 1/4 cup (15g) chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves

  • 1 tablespoon (15ml) lemon juice and 1 teaspoon (2g) finely grated zest from one lemon

For Serving:

  • 1 loaf rustic sourdough bread, thickly sliced, drizzled with olive oil, and broiled until heavily toasted

Directions

  1. In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add shallots and garlic, season lightly with salt, and cook, stirring frequently, until softened but not brown, 5 to 7 minutes.

  2. Add 'nduja and, using a wooden spoon, break it into pieces and stir vigorously to combine with shallots and garlic. Continue to cook, stirring frequently, until fat from 'nduja separates and shallots and garlic are stained red and fully coated with 'nduja, 3 to 5 minutes longer. Add wine, increase heat to high and bring to a boil.

    20200114-nduja-mussels-base

  3. Add mussels, stir, cover, and cook, shaking pan constantly and peeking every 30 seconds to stir. Cook just until all the mussels are open, 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, and using tongs, quickly transfer mussels to a warmed heatproof serving bowl. Cover mussels with saucepan lid to keep warm. Add parsley, lemon juice, and zest to saucepan and stir to combine. Taste the liquid, and adjust seasoning with salt if needed.

    20200114-nduja-mussels-cooking

  4. For Serving: Remove lid from the serving bowl, and pour contents of saucepan over mussels. Serve immediately, passing toasted bread at the table along with a large empty bowl for collecting spent mussel shells.

Special equipment

3-quart stainless steel saucier with lid

Notes

'Nduja is a spicy spreadable pork sausage that originates from the southern Italian region of Calabria. In the US, it can be purchased at specialty shops that carry salumi/charcuterie, Italian markets, or online from producers like Tempesta Artisan Salumi. Look for 'nduja made with just 4 ingredients: pork, Calabrian chilies, salt, and lactic acid.

Examine mussels before using. Discard cracked mussels or open mussels that don't close when tapped with another mussel. Farm-raised mussels are generally quite clean when sold, but they can still have grits and beards that need to be removed.

Remove grit by scrubbing mussels well under cold running water, and remove beards (that look like wisps of hair coming out from between their shells) by grabbing them and pulling toward the hinge-end of the mussels; discard the beards once removed. For more information, view our detailed guide to cleaning and debearding mussels.

Make-Ahead and Storage

Steamed mussels are best enjoyed immediately.

This Recipe Appears In

Nutrition Facts (per serving)
992Calories
27gFat
104gCarbs
77gProtein
×
Nutrition Facts
Servings: 3 to 4
Amount per serving
Calories992
% Daily Value*
Total Fat 27g35%
Saturated Fat 5g24%
Cholesterol 148mg49%
Sodium 2220mg97%
Total Carbohydrate 104g38%
Dietary Fiber 5g17%
Total Sugars 16g
Protein 77g
Vitamin C 57mg287%
Calcium 277mg21%
Iron 23mg125%
Potassium 1093mg23%
*The % Daily Value (DV) tells you how much a nutrient in a food serving contributes to a daily diet. 2,000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice.
(Nutrition information is calculated using an ingredient database and should be considered an estimate.)

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