Wood-smoked Galician mussels, rope-grown in the Arousa estuary in Galicia and packed in olive oil. Thanks to the estuary's high nutrient content the mussels thrive and grow plump and flavoursome, acquiring that Galicia-specific refined taste and texture.
Recipe tip: try them on crackers with cream cheese and a splash of tabasco. Find other tinned mussel recipes here.
About Carmelo: Carmelo is a luxe edit of Iberia’s finest tinned fish curated by Patrick Martinez, the founder of The Tinned Fish Market. It must come from marine ecosystems where sea life thrives. It must be fished seasonally, sustainably, and must be prepared by hand. This is the Carmelo manifesto.
More about the mussels
•Ropes are seeded by a small team of mussel farmers in Cambados and then suspended from rafts or bateas that float in the estuary. The estuary is divided into allotments farmed by local fishermen. In the shallow waters where clams and razor clams are harvested the allotments are marked out with poles; in the deeper waters where the mussels grow, the rafts themselves mark out the space.
•The mussel farmers keep careful watch as the mussels grow, hoisting the ropes from the water at intervals to inspect the precious bi-valves, and harvesting them only when they reach the size that the cannery demands. This doesn’t always happen. It is dependent on the level of nutrients in the water, the currents, the water temperatures, the weather. Sometimes we'll have to wait months for the Carmelo mussels to arrive.
•Once at the cannery, which sits across the water from Cambados, the mussels are smoked and packed in olive oil by hand, and each tin is sealed using a pedal seamer.
