Odd Food—Escargot

Escargot evokes a profoundly polarized reaction from diners and restauranteurs everywhere. It's understandable, in the sense that there is virtually no way to disguise the mental image or the actual image sitting on the plate in front of you. You are eating a snail, and you will have one of two reactions: either they are absolutely delicious, or completely, utterly putrid.

Let me put you at ease. The second opinion is correct. Don’t ever eat these. Ever. They have the rich, meaty, disgusting flavor of old fish and socks, and anyone who tries to pretend they are posh is either severely disabled both orally and psychologically in some way or another, or just flat-out money-grubbing.

Perhaps you think that’s a bit harsh, but the fact is, ninety percent of everything you need to know about these things is in the preparation. This is the fine oak pedestal upon which the statuesque recipes build:

Escargot Preparation

1. Rinse escargot, place in a bucket with a dish of water, cover with fabric that allows plenty of air transmission, and purge for four days.

2. If you want to fatten them after the purge, place three tablespoons of cornmeal in the bucket per snail, and when sufficient in size, purge for an additional two days. Rinse.

3. Place in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, remove, and place in water with a little vinegar to cool. Remove from shells.

Alternative Preparation

1. Remove tin of canned escargot hidden behind two cans of soup, one can of navy beans that were supposed to go in the crappy cassoulet you never bothered to make, and a chewed-through bag of semolina flour with a trail of mouse turds leading up to and away from it.

2. Rinse the tin of escargot, place it in a bucket, and purge for four days.

3. If you want to fatten the tin up, puncture slightly and leave outside in the sun. When sufficient in size, purge for an additional two days. Rinse.

4. Place tin in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, remove, and place in water with a little vinegar to cool. Open tin.

In case you haven’t figured out what the word “purge” means by now, let me dispel the myth. It means starve your snails for four days. Then you can fatten them up like Hansel on cornmeal, and when you open the bucket pray to god Gretel doesn’t shove you in. Also, the second recipe is only kind of a joke. There is such a thing as canned escargot, and frankly, it’s absolutely revolting in concept and in practice. They look like Chihuahua shit, and they smell like the underside of a pier, so much so that the Pope officially declared them fish so they could be eaten on Fridays, by people so hungry they would otherwise die before getting to church on Sunday to toss their final penny into the collection place.

To be fair, if one wants a recipe that is in the finest traditions of French cuisine, one must naturally look to Auguste Escoffier. All joking aside, here is the classical method of preparing snails.

Escargot—Snails

Select snails which are closed and with a knife remove the calcareous membrane covering the opening of the shells. Wash the snails well in a few changes of water, and then place them in a container with course salt, some vinegar, and a pinch of four. Allow them to disgorge, and cleanse themselves for approximately 2 hours then rewash well in plenty of cold water so as to remove all traces of mucous. Cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer for 5–6 minutes.

See? Much tastier. He covers them in salt and vinegar to make them vomit out all the gross and mucous rather than starving them for four days.

Maybe you’re skeptical because you think I’m an arrogant snob who believes that if I don't like something nobody should. Keep in mind this is not me talking out of my kitchen’s rear end on another continent; I’ve been to the Dordogne, and I know exactly what these things are and where they come from. France is a wet, mossy place inland, and everywhere you go there are snails stomach-footing their merry way over everything. I’ve had them prepared by French chefs, in France, and I’ll tell you what you get:

They look like Chihuahua shit, and they smell like the underside of a pier, so much so that the Catholic Church officially declared them fish so they could be eaten on Fridays, by people so hungry they would otherwise die before getting to church on Sunday to toss their final penny into the collection place.

The real giveaway that not even the French like them is evident in the final ten percent of preparations that comprise the corpus of recipes. Every single one of them includes an absolutely absurd amount of butter and garlic because without it, they taste like snails. Ask anyone who claims to love eating escargot about the specifics, and the answer is invariably the same:

Me: Do you eat escargot?

Jaques: Oui, monsieur.

Me: What do they taste like?

Jaques: Ah, mon amie: beurre à la bourguignonne. Paradis!

Me: What do they taste like without the butter and garlic?

Jaques: Mon dieu! Merde de l'ornithorynque!

Me: Right...

All that being said, if you do so choose to cook them, I will oblige. This is a preparation by Escoffier. His recipes tend to be terse because he assumes you are a trained chef, so I will help clarify anything nebulous.

Beignets d’Escargots a la Vigneronne

1. Cook the snails in the usual manner. (Start by fucking up your dinner.)

2. Whilst still hot, drain them and dry well. (Remove as much stink as possible)

3. Shallow fry them tossing over and over in butter with a little finely chopped shallot, crushed garlic and salt and pepper. (Immediately cook them in as much butter and garlic as you can, while repeatedly flinging them high into the air so when they smack into the pan it drives as much butter and garlic into the cell membranes as possible to replace the flavor of snail therein.)

4. Allow to cool a little, then drop the snails into a light frying batter containing plenty of chopped chives. (Realize that no matter how long you remain on step three, these will not be edible until they are covered in batter, and a heavy second coating of raw onion-like plant matter is applied.)

5. Deep fry in very hot oil, drain well, arrange on a serviette on a dish and garnish with fried parsley. (Although the snails have already been cooked three times—cheviched in salt, vinegar and the acid from their own vomit, boiled to fuck, and then abusively pan-fried to shit in garlic and butter—cook them a fourth time in blazing hot oil until they shrivel into a batter-to-snail ratio of 1,000–1, drain on a napkin to absorb any remaining snail, and then put burnt parsley on top so that, best case scenario, all you taste is the charred undergrowth you should have plucked off the ground and eaten in the first place instead of the snail.)

This is all very straightforward, traditional French cooking, designed to get the absolute best out of the humble snail. I recommend trying them once, for the same reason that all Marines must endure a round of tear gas—if they encounter it on the battlefield they won’t completely shit and vomit themselves into helplessness when it hits their mouth and nostrils.

So fuck snails. Also, here is a tin of snails. Available in fine garbage disposals everywhere.