Self-Taught Lesson #9: Does octopus count as a shellfish?
Everything to learn and know about shellfish
What defines a shellfish?
Shellfish is consists of two groups, crustaceans and mollusks.
A crustacean is an animal with an exoskeleton and the ability to traverse and live on land and underwater. They have legs, sometimes claws. Think of crabs, lobsters, crawfish, and shrimp.
A mollusk is an underwater-living organism with a hard, exterior shell and a soft pulp of meat inside. It pumps water in and out of its shell. Mollusks with two even shells that hinge together like a compact mirror, like clams or mussels or oysters, are bivalves. Single-shelled gastropods like snails and conches are less advanced than their relatives, the cephlapods, which includes octopi, cuttlefish, and squid.
Turtles and frogs don’t tend to fall into these categories scientifically, but culinarily they are grouped in. Turtles have a shell, and frogs seem to go wherever turtles go. Looking at the various freaky shellfish, and still recovering from butchering an already dead fish, gave me the ick, I don’t have the heart to break down how to harvest and cook a turtle.
Not today.
Everything else, fair game!
