Mussels: Bagged and sealed alive

Introducing a new highlight on our endless search for quick dinner options: the bagged fresh mussel. Guaranteed delicious for at least 10 days from harvest and sold in one-kilogram vac-packed bags, the mussel is a versatile answer to the harried home cook's quest for fast food. The mussels come from either the wild waters of Spring Bay in Tasmania, where they grow big and meaty, or from the calmer but richer waters of Boston Bay, off Port Lincoln.

It was Boston Bay mussel farmer Andrew Puglisi, whose mussels carry the Kinkawooka label, who first bagged the mussel, in 2006. The fast-growing, relatively fragile blue mussel is delicious out of the water but in his early farming days Puglisi found the eating quality, the weight and consequently the value of the mussel declined as it travelled from bay to buyer.

An international search uncovered a number of different technologies for keeping mussels alive until they could be cooked. And while Spring Bay, Kinkawooka and Boston Bay mussels now use slightly different methods, all slow the animals' metabolism using super-chilled water then pack it in a bag with a modified atmosphere that either re-creates the natural environment or uses inert gases to prevent bacteria growth.

The way to cook, at its most simple: open the bag, toss contents into hot pan, top with lid, cook for about as long as a simple pop song. Eat.

This is how farmer Mark Andrews does it. Andrews is a New Zealander with years of experience in the mussel-farming world. Casting around for opportunities beyond his native waters, he considered South Africa and various sites around Australia before settling on Boston Bay, just off Port Lincoln on the southern tip of South Australia's Eyre Peninsula. It was the naturally occurring spat (spawn) in these nutrient-rich waters that sealed the deal. While other mussel farmers have to order in their eggs, Andrews and fellow Boston Bay musselier, Andrew Puglisi, only have to monitor their own sites.

After mussels spawn, the spat float around for a few weeks before settling down. "Around here they'd settle on you if you stood still long enough," says Puglisi. The spat herd together, clustering in dense communities on the fluffed-up ropes hung for the purpose under the water's surface. To demonstrate, Puglisi hauls up a buoy, attached to mussel ropes, through crystal clear waters.

The silos that mark Port Lincoln's previous wealth as a grain producer are still visible from this serene area of the bay where the water is so clean and clear we can see the long ropes looping under the water.

Puglisi, a sixth-generation fisherman, is a short nugget of a man whose blue eyes disappear underneath his blonde brows when he smiles. His father came to Port Lincoln 40 years ago and trawled for prawns in the Spencer Gulf before getting into tuna farming. The family is a big name in Australian fishing; Andrew's uncle Joe is one of the four fathers of the modern tuna industry in Port Lincoln, a foursome who famously still meet for cappuccino and industry chat once a week.

Puglisi pulls off a handful of the tightly clustered mussels. The mussels are filter feeders, he explains, and stay open the whole time they are underwater, only closing when they are pulled out. The soft-shelled, thumbnail-sized mussels he has in his hand have to be reseeded to spread out along the ropes and give them enough space to grow.

The re-seeding is managed by two mussel farmers on the boat next to us. A machine packs a cotton "sock" with mussels. In the centre of the "sock" is the mussel rope. In a few weeks the mussels will have grown new beards to attach themselves to the rope. The machine extrudes the sock as if it were a giant mussel sausage and the two men handle the sausage with the ease that only comes from hours of practice, looping it onto the backbone ropes.

The mussels are ready for harvest nine months after the spat settles on the ropes. The new season starts in July with small, sweet mussels. Back in port, harvested and de-clumped mussels are sent through a cleaning machine that removes any opportunistic oysters from the shell. Next they bump over rollers running in opposition to each other like an old-fashioned clothes ringer to pull the beards from the mussels. From there they tumble into bags, the bags are sealed and are sent on their way to the shops - but not yet in the numbers anticipated by the farmers.

Andrews, whose mussels sell under the Boston Bay label, has 168 hectares of water, with only 18 of them developed. Puglisi, whose mussels carry the Kinkawooka label, says: "We can grow as many as we want; marketing and sales is the bottleneck."

The time seems right for mussel-building - the shellfish are sustainable, healthy, eminently affordable and delicious.