Shuck Portland Open Fire Cooking Class

The 3rd Annual Shuck Portland happened the first week of February this year (2020). It included a number of events throughout the week from dinners and classes to citywide restaurant specials. I hadn’t really been aware of the festival, until I stumbled on some free tickets to the final class - Iron, Fire, and Brine Open Fire Cooking Class.

After some welcome coffee (or whiskey), the class got started with a lesson on how to shuck oysters. I’ve never had the opportunity to shuck oysters before, so this was the part I most enjoyed and I learned something too. With some coaching I managed to figure it out and shucked and ate about a half dozen oysters.

Next, we added some heat (which was also nice on that cold February day) and moved onto some grilled flatbread over the open fire, with a phenomenal dip made from canned mussels among other ingredients.

Also some grilled oysters on the half shell with flavored butters.

And then the main event, shellfish pozole. It was quite a process, although it cooked very fast over the very hot fire. Some initial ingredient prep involved slices of squash roasted over the fire and a big pot of cooked hominy.

The soup started with a base of burnt onion dashi and crab stock. Pretty quickly after, the hominy and two types of clams went in and cooked a bit. And to finish it was topped with a little fresh veg.