How to Prepare Snails For Cooking, Pictures From Scratch

 

How to prepare snails for cooking, from scratch.  How to wash your snails to remove slime at home.

Preparing fresh snails for cooking is very easy if you know how to. Cleaning snails don’t have to be yucky and full of slime if you know the easiest method to achieve the beat cleaning of snails.

The snail cleaning steps I’m going to show you below are what I do to prepare snails to eat.

Growing up in the rainforests, snails were my favorite meat. With a lot of rainforest in the South where I grew up in, it was very easy to add snails to our meals. Farmers didn’t have to own snail farms at all. No one bothered about snail farming. All that anyone needed to do was pick wash the snails and cook with lots of pepper and eat.

Honestly speaking, you may find it hard to believe this but in Southern Nigeria, we eat large snails picked from the forest during the rainy season. These snails are Lsi known as escargot.

There is just no need yet for snail farms over there because there are so many wild snails crawling in the forests. Just know how to wash snails and how to eat them, that’s all.

People sneak out into the rainforests at night to harvest these wild snails for food. We just wash the snails, cook and eat without spending a dime.

All we need to gather baskets full of snails is a heavy downpour. Once it rains, the nutritious animals crawl out of their hiding places in search of food. Snails crawl out at night in search of food, they search for food quietly in the dark.

Watch this video of me washing snails by removing them from their shells without breaking the shells. Watch on YouTube and subscribe to my new channel to enable you get content like this whenever we upload or watch below:

What snail harvesters in my area do is wait for the nightfall and go harvest snails.

Watch me on YouTube cutting the clean snails into lovely butterfly shapes before cooking.

Comparing the Cost of snails in Nigeria

Compared to the cost of snails in Abuja and other parts, they are very very affordable in South-South  Nigeria. While one large snail goes for 100 Naira in the South in places like  Ikom, One large snail in Abuja is 900 Naira or more.

So, I grew up in The South really enjoying snails and discovering easier methods of cleaning them.

Types of Land Snails we use for food

There are many types of snails and even slugs. While some are edible, slugs are not. We categorize edible snails according to their sizes.

The method of preparing large snails from.scratch is not the same as that of cleaning small-sized snails for cooking.

For large-sized snails like the ones I’m cleaning in the picture above, the easiest method of preparing them is what I just described.

Different Methods of preparing snails for cooking

There are about four methods of preparing snails for cooking from.scratch.

1. Cutting off the tip.of the shell and pushing out the snail as shown in the pictures.
2. Boiling the snails with the shells before removing dead snails from the shells for cooking.
3. Roasting the snails on fire until they are lifeless before pulling out of their shells for cooking.
4. Completely breaking the snail shell with a hammer or stone before picking out the snails for cleaning and cooking.

The best and easiest way to clean large snails is to neatly remove the tip.of the shell.Then gently push out the snail into a bowl of water containing lime or alum. That way you don’t get your hands messy with snail slime. As soon as they drop in the like water, the snails kind of harden up while the lime or alum prevents anymore slime coming out.

How to remove snail slime before cooking

There are four ways that I know for removing slime from.snails before cooking. All the four ways work but the way that I do and I feel is the best is the use of lime oranges to remove snail slime.

As I explained below, garri and lemon can remove snail slime but not as effective as lime. Alum too is amazing at the snail slime removing job but I hope it doesn’t contain chemicals?

Do not clean snails with soap or detergents. Do not eas snails with chemicals or household cleaning agents. Only wash with lime juice or alum in clean water. That is how I clean my snails for cooking.

Yes, there is a very simple method of shelling your large snails without getting the kitchen messy. There is no need to crush the shells with a hammer cos that is a lot of work cleaning the broken pieces from your snails.

Some foodies saw our crunchy peppered snail recipe and wanted a step by step snail preparation procedure

But then, for no reason, I just couldn’t remember the camera when I cooked snails.

Sometimes I let the snail sellers at the farmers market clean my snails but not when a particular seller washes with alum. Snails washed with alum do not really taste natural to me but they are great anyway.

Thankfully this seller doesn’t wash with limes so, the snails were brought home whole. For how to prepare your snails from scratch…

Cleaning your snails at home is the best. That same bowl of alum water is what snail traders use to
wash all snails bought in a day, that’s from morning till night. They won’t even leave that thick dirty water where buyers can peep, it’s either under the table or a bit further where you can’t see clearly.

The water may not really be dirty but because one can’t see, it’s hard to trust.

Items For Easy Snail Cleaning and how to wash snails at home

1. A cleaver or machete
2. A Table knife
3. Limes or alum dropped in the water

How to remove snail slime from snails 

Simple steps on how to prepare snails for cooking, cleaning snails from scratch

Try Washing snails as shown in the illustration of the picture below

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ON HOW TO PREPARE SNAILS FOR COOKING: (FAQ)

1. How do you wash and prepare snails for Cooking? ANSWER: To clean snails for cooking, you need to gently remove the snails from their shell and clean the slime with lime oranges before cooking in boiling water.

2. How do you remove snail slime?

   The best and easiest way to clean snail slime is to squeeze lime juice on the snails. Lime juice immediately stops snail slime. Another easy way to remove snail slime is to wash with alum water (Water that has alum in it). Scroll up and look at my step by step pictures on how to remove snail slime. To remove snail slime on your hands, rub some lime juice or alum. Garri and lemon juice too cam remove smail slime from hands but they are not as effective as lime juice and alum.

3. How do I get a snail out of its shell without breaking it?

   ANSWER: To get a snail out of its shell without breaking it, you need a cleaver or any heavy knife that can easily take off the tiny tip of the snail without breaking the shell.

4. How do you prepare snails to be crunchy?

   ANSWER: Adding washed snails to boiling water immediately hardens and makes the snails crunchy.  What I do to my snails is to add them to water that is already boiling. Another way I make my snails crunchy is to freeze them Freezing snails.make them crunchy . To preserve the crunchiness of your frozen snails, you need to immediately add them to boiling water without defrosting. Because I like my snails crunchy, after freezing, I do not let them thaw. I bring the iced snails out of the freezer and immediately drop in a pot of boiling water to retain the snail crunch.

5. How do you make snail sauce after washing snails? ANSWER: To get snail sauce, you have to remove the snail slime using lime juice or alum, then add the washed snails to boiling water. That water becomes your snail sauce if you season it with salt, cubes, and pepper. You can add ingredients to the boiling snails to make snail sauce.  Look at the picture guide I posted above on how to remove snail slime. Also, look at the quick procedure above on how to prepare snails from scratch for cooking.

6. How long does it take for snails to cook? ANSWER:  IT TAKES 10 minutes for snails to cook. Small snails cook between 5 to 7 minutes but large snails take longer to cook. From when the snails are dropped in boiling water, wait 10 minutes and turn off the stove. Your snails are cooked and ready to be eaten.

 

MY GO-TO SNAIL CLEANING METHOD

What I have shared with you on this post is what works for me every time that I wash snails. My neighbour never really likes snails because of every time she cooked her snail meat it turns out not crunchy. She tried cooking them whole and also tried cooking with the snail shells but couldn’ get her snails to be crunchy until I taught her how to wash snails with lime juice. She tried my method And had to send a bowl of crunchy peppered snails to my house as a thank you for helping her learn how to remove slime and harden her snails by washing with lime or alum.

It didn’t end there, when her family travelled to the South, she got me a basket of snails as gift and I couldn’t thank her enough. Her snails gave me the inspiration to update this snail washing post with a video on how to prepare snails for cooking.

 

Do you have a different method of washing your snails?

How do you prepare snails for cooking? Is it like I do or you have another secret to removing snail slime? Please leave a comment below and share your trick with us.

Here is how to wash snails without breaking the shell or boiling them alive. In this video, I wash my snail easily removing them from the shells without smashing a hammer or boiling live snails.

How do you clean your molluscs without breaking or smashing the shells?

More Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. How do you remove snails from the shell before cooking? ANSWER: YOU CUT OFF THE TIP AS SHOWN IN THE SHORT VIDmolluscs. tHEN PUSH OUT THE SLIMY SNAIL.
2. What is the best method to wash snails? ANSWER: The best method to wash snails for me is the use of lime juice on the snails to help harden them and make for easy washing.

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