Green Shell Mussels With Garlic Butter Sauce

We have an event I volunteered to help with for the military spouses recently. They decided to put on a Wine Walk where they would go house to house and each house would offer a couple of wine choices and appetizers. I don't drink but I wanted to help. Luckily my father in law took me to a bunch of wineries in the Marlborough region of New Zealand and I remembered which ones they liked! Since I was going with Reisling and Sauvignon Blanc I decided to serve chinook salmon and green shell mussels for the appetizers. I saw some suggestions online that cheese and mussels are both good pairings for Sauvignon Blanc so that's what we decided to do!

You'll need about 25 mussels (which were a little less than came in this package)

1/2 cup of shredded cheese

1/2 cup of softened butter

1/2 cup of panko bread crumbs

1 Tbsp of parsley

Either 6 cloves of garlic (or 4 tsp of garlic powder)

A baking sheet

Parchment Paper

Two mixing bowls

A basting brush (or a spoon)

Before you get started preheat your oven to 250 degrees.

Line the bottom of the baking sheet with parchment paper then lay out the mussels facing upwards. Fun fact, orange ones are female and cream are male! Make sure they're laid out so you can easily baste them.

For the cheese mixture you're going to put 1/2 cup of shredded cheese into one of your mixing bowls. Add 1/2 cup of panko and mix it together well. This will add a nice texture to the mussels.

You need 1/2 cup of butter. Add 4 tsp of garlic powder (or 6 cloves of garlic) and 1 tbsp of parsley. Then melt the butter for 45 seconds in the microwave and stir it well with your basting brush.

Take your garlic butter and use the basting brush to add over the top of each of the mussels evenly. Continue until you've used all the butter. It took me a couple of passes over all of them to use it all. A bit of butter will pool in the shells but that's ok.

After that take your cheese mixture and sprinkle it over the top of the mussels. Again, add it evenly to all of the mussels.

Pop them in the 250 degree oven for 20 minutes. When they come out the cheese mixture will have melted into the mussel shells. The panko will absorb some of the garlic butter but there will still be some left over. Since I needed to serve them a couple of hours later I placed the mussels in a bowl to heat up later and poured the remaining garlic butter in a tupperware container to reapply when I reheat them to keep them from drying out too much.