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.

this is a cuttlefish lol (Source: Columbia Magazine)

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!