My cider recipe for cooking snails

Alcohol is an essential ingredient in cooking my locally grown edible snails and here is how to use the local cider. The flavour of home cooked snails will beat anything you've tasted on holiday.

Make your cooking stock with the following ingredients:
1oo ml cider
1 litre water
1 crushed clove garlic,
chopped shallot,
chopped carrot,
sea salt and black pepper
1 clove, 1 bay leaf, small sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg,chopped parsley and thyme (could be dried or fresh)1 whole bird’s eye chilli (don’t break it up or the stock could be too hot)
(One litre of stock would cook a kilo of snails.)

Make a 10% brine preferably with sea salt

Bring a large pan of water to rapid boil and add salt. Drop the sleeping snails into the boiling water and bring back to the boil for five minutes. Plunge them into cold water after blanching so that you can handle the shells to remove the snail using a fork. Twist the snail following the shape of the shell to remove it and rinse in cider vinegar to loosen the slime.

Drop the de-shelled snails into hot brine and boil for thirty minutes to remove slime.

Remove the snails from the brine and drop them into the hot stock. Bring back to the boil and simmer for about one and a half hours. I use a slow cooker for this part of the process so that I can be sure they will simmer and won’t boil dry.

At the end of the cooking process turn off the heat and leave cooked snails in the hot stock while you prepare the garlic butter.

For the garlic butter:
Per 250 gm pack unsalted English butter (taken out of the fridge well ahead of time) which should do 5 or 6 dozen snails, depending on how much you like garlic butter.
20gm chopped garlic
40 gm chopped shallot
Freshly picked parsley – enough to colour it green
Add cider to taste but try 70 ml

The herbs, garlic and shallot are most easily chopped in a food processor with the cider unless you are a skilled chef. Then mix well with the butter.Drain the snails well and reheat with the cider butter in a hot oven in an oven proof dish until the butter bubbles. Served with crusty bread and a side salad.

Smoked snails

Smoked food is very popular in Britain and I like smoked snails very much. I cook the snails in local cider first in the usual way, then transfer them to a sweet cure for a few minutes while they are still hot. If you leave them too long they will be too salty. Twenty minutes in one of those small domestic smokers is enough to impart a good smokey flavour without damaging the soft texture. I put brown sugar in the seasalt cure to give a little sweetness and smoke some garlic with the snails so I can pack them with the garlic and fresh thyme in local rapeseed oil. I kept an apple theme by using local cider in the cooking process and apple wood for smoking.

They could be vacuum packed if you don't want to eat them straight away. Smoked foods do freeze well but you don't want to damage the texture. I tried bottling them but it wasn't a good idea!

Eat them cold.