Brad Explores an Oyster Farm | It's Alive | Bon Appétit

all right maybe me check that check all right I'm gonna hit those keep those marks look at it feels like we're standing on clay all right okay wear my sunglasses all right Vince all right all right so we're up here in Duxbury Massachusetts Rhode Island Creek oyster farm kind enough to have sup here show us their operation from the moment you know they start farming them to the second you eat em oysters are should be very much alive you know we figured that would be a perfect place to come up here and learn about oyster farming since we since we love them so much and yeah take two so I think this is a take three start from the beginning boy stur farming company take five I was good all right we're gonna be wasted farmers I didn't like that one bin champagne and your oysters and that sucks kind enough nuff me an old Vinny no-nobody right yeah I thought that dramatic exit was gonna be [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is this is the lab we need many the science lab we need alright science penny oh you know this is Vinnie this is that uh that ecto stuff remember the higher the the juice boxes the ecto Slimer juice remember that the hi-c made it Slimer stuff ghostbusters I have anywhere around here Island Creek oyster and we made it into this is what your hatchery so this is where you take baby oysters raise them feed them I'm assuming this is algae you're growing this is algae so we're you're growing that and you're feeding the baby oysters and your mating adult oysters in here raising them to a point where you can bring them out into the bay yeah there's two things we grow in here it's oysters and oysters food okay everything you see around us is oyster food and we've got millions and millions and millions of baby oysters when they grow out in here until they're about the size of a flake of ground pepper okay so at that point you can hold 800,000 of them in the in your head in your hands cupped like that weighs about two pounds from that point for you flash-forward eighteen months that same handful will weigh about 200,000 pounds and take up an entire acre of Duxbury Bay pretty pretty rapidly so it starts as a larvae where they were actually a little swimming oyster critter and then once it gets it mixes and it gets what we call on that when it all happens you know in the sperm it's okay what are we calling the fertilization that's when it becomes a seed yeah so once it gets fertilized then it turns into this free swimming larva cruising around eating algae and then after a couple weeks it forms a shell so then after the hatchery which are in where do we go next next step in the process is the up Weller's alright so they're in natural habitat water but in a in a unit or something actly all right well maybe we go check that out humming Vincenzo what do you think so they made this little system Vince where the water comes pumped up from the bottom so they get a bit constantly in a flow of water that'll keep them alive and feeding them right and it allowed them to grow yep so they're you know they're feeding off of the abundant nutrients in the water column here in the Bay and it allows them to eat to their heart's content and what we're doing today is we're they're going to be going through a great the groups that have hit the quarter inch mark out to our nursery system and the ones that aren't quite there will come back into our up Weller you got the bottom yeah we'll start following him into that there we go you've got some extras we'll just rinse them out it's tough right here of any question million bucks I don't know if that's true very nice hey Vincenzo is this your first first boat ride it's our first boat ride Vinnie you want to hold me over the front we're heading out to our oyster Plexus you'll see a bunch of basically floating houses or all the different farms out here oh that tumbler looks like you guys are mining out here so that's our sorter all right so tanner he's our resident high schooler all right tanner hey what are you doing Tanner you got 15 seconds Tanner made quick we got we're taking the seeds with sorting it with these ones we've gone back in the upwelling these other ones they're gonna move on something bigger very cool we made it I'm gonna get some good shots of before the before the drought before the tide of any pay attention but we're working so get this guy these came rate from that little the upwelling system we were out on the docks and how long have they been out here these guys have been out here about three weeks about three weeks oh yeah yeah look how much they grew there Vinny get in there one for about I'd say about doubled in size huh yep all right and what are we doing with these again all off so these are coming up to our the nursery system up in the back River the back river [Music] backfired baby now why why do you want to drop boys but in a riverbed as you can see the water is quite murky there's a lot of growth here in the lot of nutrients warmer water so you drop them here so the oysters will essentially grow fat a little faster but it's one of the reasons why the island Creek oyster has that unique flavor profile to it it's it's the mixture of the estuary water and the sea water that together gives it a combination of brine and really nice earthy flavor to those go all right that's it when they go to high school they they're not on the bottom they are they are Island Creek oysters are bottom planted how the hell you get them either by picking or we dredge them so that all when I go to a restaurant I eat an island Creek oyster it goes through this whole stage that we did and they finish on on the mud bog ah just like mother nature would intend our aunt Dottie products are grown in trays what you guys will see out in a shake wish I'm low tide hi guys hello this is Brad and Vince the crew so they are taking the market size deutscher that they have dragged up earlier this morning and they are sorting them by size and counting them up 500 counts these are market size and these will be bagged up and shipped Manhattan tomorrow Wow hey Benny look I found your relatives crabby bastard trained to do that so it's a little flat little shy we're gonna throw that back then a nice cup okay what about this marriage Andrew what do you guys do these monstrosity right down here these are jumbo yeah I got a little small but a good cop maybe a little Tommy oh well that's looking like a Keller all right easy Vince go flat kind of a little cup maybe throw it back yeah yeah give a little time now would you how does that work with like I know she was filling it before about breaking off the new Vince I found another one of your relatives you know what that is horseshoe crab yeah pretty stork sumbitch there you go bud I ain't here to do no harm alright be enough with the horseshoe crabs man come on so remember before of anything when we came out here it's a little skiff with Olaf and we pulled those bags of the seeds out of these remember this was all underwater and we actually drove over those cages over there but God the oyster gods are on our favor then scrub your camera don't worry about Vince's camera all right God is speaking to us Vince look who joined the party a little Vinny afraid of the rain so we sorted them all out by size and these are at the right size where we're gonna bring them to finish into the into the Bay waters at two years is when they pull them and that's when they go right to the the restaurants in the consumer following me here then what do you think man we folds up this whole little video idea and we just become oyster farmers up here huh not a bad life duuuh stirs I mean this might be a stupid question but you might want to pay attention to oysters can they move like clams we're gonna go Vinny did you hear that about the winter so in the winter they take every single Easter out of the water and they put them in the basement of that house down there go ahead take a look they have like a big root cellar and they can stay out of the water that long and then come springtime all them go back out here Vinny oysters that's a new way of serving an oyster Vinny oyster no one's doing that yeah that may be the stupidest thing ever said nasty I stand here and you're the the founder founder old order owner man with the plan skip Bennett from Island Creek oyster when'd you get started how long you been away stir-fry I started growing Clarence in 1990 clam chowder and then they all died in 1995 minutes switch noise there's so many different influences that create the flavor nuance you know these are exposed for a long time but they're also really close to the opening of the bay here to where pure seawater comes back so when we started growing them out here I was sure that these were going to be super salty and they're not literally yeah yeah real sweet they almost have like a crab meat now I know a lot of in some places they're using oysters not just to eat they'll put them in polluted water systems well they do that in like in New York in the harbor they're trying to grow some oysters but even out here they're doing an ecological service by removing excessive algebras and they can remove nitrogen to turn nitrogen back into gas it's a perfect food oh good googly moogly reminds me of the time I sold my fortune 500 company and now it's just golf and Rose a hard day or Easter farmer will have one of the gentlemen maybe show us how to properly shuck an oyster Vinny it feels a little weird don't film this one come on man so what we like to say about these things is these oysters take two years to grow okay it takes two seconds to screw them up not to jump in front but I see how you're holding it and you notice I can oyster usually has a CAC up you're kind of that's where you're gonna want to put the cup down yeah if you think about you you want the cup to hold all the meat and you definitely want to hold all the saltwater inside yes part of the experience right you're getting a little sip of Duxbury Bay water in New York City when you're shucking if you hold the oyster in the palm of your hand you have the hinge that little pointy part pointed back at you so what you want to do is you go into that pointy part right there the other thing the reason why I put it in my hand facing away from me the adductor muscle the little thing that holds the two shells together is right there and those are the two key points you're trying to separate the hinge is where the two shelves attach to each other and the muscle is which keeps the shell attached to the oyster so you want to go in and like a 45 degree 45 and the oyster will tell you yeah you know a good one it just kinda it's like putting the key that just pops exactly wants them exactly so what you do is put it into the hinge and then you twist back and forth and you wiggle and when I say twist and wiggle I mean you're going back and forth like this and then you're twisting the knife oh I even wanted the pop oh there you go what you want to do at this point is you're gonna twist the knife all the way around so that's perpendicular to the shell what you're doing is you're popping that shell up oh mine broke yours bro user error you start over you watch this yes you can do oysters surgery let's do a stir jack so you can you gotta cut the muscle out you do the Philly flip as we call it and you flip it I just bottom belly is exposed screwed up what you call it the Philly flip I think Philadelphia okay getting back to the your standard shucky so now we want to remember that muscle is right there and this is the number one way people screw it up what you want to do is you think about it like you're peeling an apple or a potato or something you want to grind this knife right along the top the top of the show so the goal is that when you take that top shell off there's no gross meat dangling off of it so you grind it along the top like so clean so if it's good then you got no meat on the on the top shell there so you might have some schmutz in here well smoke you just take your your pinky and kind of clear that out so now you're looking at it you can see the muscle and this is another part people screwed up because what they do is they go in and try to use like the sharp blade of the knife to cut away at the muscle and what you end up with is scrambled oyster so what you want to do here is instead of using the blade of the knife again you're taking it you're putting the knife kind of on the shell and you're just clearing it away I'll just kind of scrape them just like you're peeling a potato so that way the blade isn't going into your oyster exactly because if you do the blade you're gonna cut through the meat of the oyster I've been doing it wrong the whole time vincenzo there you go this is the first day of the rest of your life yeah there you have it you clear it away and then you savor it Cheers cheers buddy that's how you shuck an oyster VIN pretty sure I can eat about four dozen of those absolutely yeah that's good enough we're starting we're trying to be quiet no we're done one of the main kind of folder differentiators with oysters is the texture right so you got an oyster with a healthy oyster is a nice toothy bite plump Bobby it's got a nice plump but is not like you know chewing on a flat water that's why you'd want to screw it up this is why this is alright guys there you have it we learned all about oyster farming takes two years to grow them as you saw it's a lot of work they're kind of high maintenance you know kind of a little needy thanks Island Creek oyster for showing us how they do it boy stirs I mean no brainer cleaning the water clean protein for you just win-win situation so buy some oysters learn about farming I'm gonna work on a farm do whatever you want to do get out there get dirty and get involved in your food huh bone Appetit not a bad day at the office you know what I always wanted to do Vinny he goes guys my whole life Vinny my whole life I want I wanted to do rulling to be a rower I always wanted to do growing that hoo-hoo-hoo going fast working together cutting through the water yeah I want to be a row of in Hazzard they push with their legs right say who knows the other way so you push and then you you pull so it's like whoo right [Laughter]

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 3,708,463

Keywords: oysters, shucking, how to shuck an oyster, oyster shucking, island creek oysters, oyster farmin, duxbury bay, seafood, what is, brad, brad leone, it's alive, alive, fermented, live food, test kitchen, how to make, fermentation, probiotics, make, eating oysters, shucking oysters, pearls in oysters, cooking oysters, eating oysters raw, fresh oysters, oyster recipe, oyster, food, bon appetit

Id: pE_N0WPT2RQ

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017