Can you eat the snail's tail? Is it yellow or poop inside?

For people living in non-coastal cities, fish, shrimp, crab and shellfish are often the standard for a good meal. Faced with these shells of various shapes and sizes, "where can I eat them?" and "how can I eat them?" have become the most common questions.

For example, can the "tail" of a snail be eaten? Many people think that the snail tail is particularly delicious. For example, the "snail liver" of the Dongfeng snail is known as the " foie gras of the sea ", and many people go for its tail. Some people also think that the snail tail is very dirty and "full of shit" . Some food bloggers also teach people to remove the liver and squeeze out the gallbladder before eating conchs...

What is in the snail's tail? What should we pay attention to when eating snails?

Q1 Is there feces or yellow in the snail's tail?

The snail's anus is located near the shell opening, so the feces are directly discharged into the sea water. What we call "yellow" is actually the snail's gonads and digestive glands.

Q2 What is the tail of a snail?

The snail's tail is actually the snail's internal organs, which include the heart, gills, kidneys, stomach, gonads, digestive glands and other organs.

Q3 Why do food bloggers teach people to remove their livers and gallbladders?

From the anatomical diagram, we can see that mollusks such as snails do not have liver and gallbladder. What the food bloggers refer to as "picking this and squeezing that" are actually the gonads and digestive glands.

Q4 Can snail tails be eaten?

The viscera itself is edible, but some of it may taste bitter. In addition, there may be some dirt in the viscera that we need to pay extra attention to, such as mud, semi-digested products, densely packed small snails, and shellfish toxins.

Q5 What are these “dirty things”?

Just place the snails in clean water for a few days to remove mud, semi-digested products, and some bitterness. The densely packed small snails actually exist in field snails. Field snails are the rare ovoviviparous animals among snails. The small snails usually take several months to gestate in the mother's body. If you really mind, you can avoid eating snails during the snail breeding season from April to August.

After snails eat toxic seaweed, shellfish toxins will be produced in their bodies, which is also what we need to pay most attention to. It is highly toxic and reacts quickly, and even high-temperature cooking cannot completely degrade it. However, as long as we buy snails through regular channels, there is generally no problem. If you are really worried, just remove the snail tail and only eat the fully cooked gastropod, which is also very delicious!

After solving the question of "can it be eaten", the next question should naturally be " is it delicious " and " how to eat it ". Come on, let's take stock of 10 common edible snails that are delicious no matter how they are cooked .

Abalone discus hinggi

Haliotis discus hannai｜Jan Delsing / Wikimedia

The first to appear is the abalone, which is called a fish but is not a fish. Abalone, like other conchs, belongs to the class Gastropoda of the phylum Mollusca . Although its flat appearance often makes people forget that it is a conch, a closer look at the spiral at the top of its shell will reveal that it is actually a conch with a particularly large last whorl !

Abalone, which is listed as the first of the "Eight Delicacies of the Sea", was a delicacy that only the rich and powerful could enjoy in ancient times, but now it has become a common dish on the tables of ordinary people. This is mainly due to the rapid development of the breeding industry, which has made abalone cheaper and cheaper.

The price of fresh abalone is quite affordable at present. You can stir-fry with garlic, steam, make soup, grill over charcoal fire｜Manji / flickr

Cone snail

Turritella bacillum | Zachi Evenor / flickr

The cone snail has a very high spiral tower and looks like a spiral nail, so some areas in Guangdong call it "oncomelania snail". Coincidentally, this common name is the same as the "oncomelania snail", the only intermediate host of schistosomiasis . In fact, it is the oncomelania snail living in freshwater that can spread schistosomiasis. The cone snail living in seawater has nothing to do with it and can be eaten without worry.

The most common way to cook cone snails is to stir-fry them with spicy sauce . Usually, the tail of the snail is cut off with pliers first, which makes it easier to absorb the flavor and pick out the meat.

Stir-fried Cone Snails｜Left-handed Chef/Douguo Food

Babylonia square

Babylonia areolata｜H. Zell / Wikimedia

Also known as "flower snail", "phoenix snail" and "sea pig snail". Dongfeng snail has a light fishy smell, delicious meat and crisp taste. It is very common and popular in the southern China market. Common cooking methods include blanching, stir-frying with spicy sauce and stir-frying with sauce .

Spicy Flower Snails｜Hui Hui Cooking Art/ Douguo Food

Among the many sea snails, the Dongfeng conch is a very "lively" type. Although it usually lurks in the sand, as soon as it smells the smell of food, it can quickly crawl out to find food. Its crawling speed makes people wonder if it is playing at double speed.

The baby snail runs quickly towards food｜berlika

Litchi Periwinkle

A species of lychee snail (Thais sp.) | me / Wikimedia

Also known as spicy snail and bitter snail, it is known as the "spicy girl among snails". Lychee snails live on the shady side of reefs or on the seabed reefs in the middle and lower areas of the intertidal zone. They are distributed along the coast of China and are one of the easiest snails to pick up when going to the sea .

It has a spicy taste , but many people like it. Snail soup and snail stew are very popular among residents and tourists in southern Fujian.

However, when abalone is being farmed, its role can only be reduced to a foil - abalone farmers often put a few lychee snails in the abalone cages, allowing this carnivorous snail to remove oysters, barnacles, glass ascidian and other organisms in the cages, thereby improving the growth efficiency of the abalone .

Lychee Snail: How did a good snail become a security guard?

Red rock snail

Rapana venosa | George Chernilevsky / Wikimedia

It is also known as the veined red snail and conch. The "oyster snail" in the sea-hunting videos generally refers to it. It is distributed in both the north and south of China, and the production in the north is huge, with a stable supply in the market . The red wrinkled rock snail has a large foot and a sweet taste, which is very popular among consumers.

Like the lychee snail, the red wrinkled rock snail is also carnivorous, and its main food is bivalve shellfish. When it encounters a shellfish smaller than itself, it will first firmly suck it with its ventral foot, then secrete acidic substances to anesthetize it, and then slowly eat it. Therefore, in some areas, bait is used to "catch snails".

Giant snail

Neverita didyma｜H. Zell / Wikimedia

Also known as flat jade snail, fragrant snail, and belly button snail. It is an important economic snail species along the coast of China. It is large, high in protein, low in fat, chewy, and has a refreshing aftertaste. Large jade snails are suitable for blanching or stir-frying , but the cooking must be done quickly, otherwise it will be overcooked and difficult to pick out or chew.

Stir-fried conch｜Zhaowowo/Douguo Food

The biggest feature of the giant snail is the fleshy feet that appear when it is in a stretched state. When stimulated, it can quickly "squeeze water" and become smaller . It is very cute and makes people very hungry.

The fleshy feet of the giant snail｜self / Wikimedia

Mud Snail

Mud snail (Bullacta exarata)｜Try the good taste / Douguo Food

Although mud snails are small, they have thin shells and thick meat, and are very satisfying to eat one at a time. The most common way to cook mud snails is to "drunk mud snails": clean the mud snails, soak them in salt water for several times, then marinate them in a marinade made of fennel, cinnamon, ginger slices, etc., and finally add a small amount of rice wine. The sweet and crisp drunken mud snails are ready.

Drunken mud snails are a famous snack in the Jiangsu and Zhejiang regions, and they go well with rice. However, since they are not cooked at high temperatures, they may contain bacteria or parasites, so it is recommended to cook them before eating .

Cooked and Drunken Mud Snails｜Yumancang Seafood/ Douguo Food

Conch

Neptunea arthritica cumingii｜Guido Poppe / gastropods

Also known as the ringing conch, windmill conch, and golden conch. This conch was previously called the Kamin's whelk, and its Chinese name was changed to "fragrant conch" after the "fragrant conch genus" was separated.

The individual snail is generally more than 10 cm long. The snail meat can be eaten fresh or dried. It is a snail with high economic value. Of course, the price is not cheap. The market price in Liaoning Province is nearly 50 yuan per catty.

Coconut Whelk

Melo melo｜Mosmas / Wikimedia

Also known as yellow snail, meat snail, melon snail. Coconut snails live in shallow waters and are easy to collect, and have a large amount of meat, so they have long been the focus of fishermen's collection of food. Coconut snails can grow to the size of a Hami melon and weigh more than 20 kilograms. They are probably the largest snails you can see in the seafood market .

However, according to the "first law of eating snails": the bigger the snail, the better the meat. The same is true for coconut snails: if they are not cooked, they will smell fishy, ​​and if they are overcooked, they will be too hard, which is a great test of the cooking skills of the cook.

The best way is to cut the snail meat into thin slices one or two millimeters thick, and then stir-fry it with pickled bamboo shoots, chili peppers, etc. , so that the snail meat can absorb the flavor of the seasoning without being too hard to chew.

Chinese round snail

Chinese round pond snail (Cipangopaludina chinensis) | Wikimedia

For people living in non-coastal cities, the above-mentioned marine snails are rare. What is more common is the "field snail" that lives in freshwater . The "field snail" we usually refer to is generally the Chinese round field snail or the Chinese round field snail (C. cathayensis). These two types of field snails are widely distributed in China and can be found in lakes in almost all places.

Fried snails｜Yundo bread zx / Douguo Food

The most important thing to pay attention to when eating snails is: don’t make the mistake!

The river snail looks very similar to the famous invasive alien species, the golden apple snail, which is the intermediate host of parasites such as Angiostrongylus cantonensis and Echinostoma volvulus. A golden apple snail can contain 6,000 parasites. Eating insufficiently heated golden apple snails may cause parasitic infection, which can lead to coma and death in severe cases.

Ahem, this is not a golden apple snail, it’s a “broken life snail”.

So how do you tell the difference between field snails and golden apple snails? First of all, the golden apple snail is bigger than the field snail , and its mouth is also bigger than the field snail; secondly , the shell of the golden apple snail is yellow , while the field snail is bluish-brown; finally, the "butt" of the golden apple snail is flat , while the "butt" of the field snail is pointed.

The difference between the golden apple snail and two common field snails, the Chinese round field snail and the Chinese round field snail｜Claude & Amandine EVANNO

The above ten types of snails have different appearances and tastes. However, no matter which type of snail, it may be the intermediate host of parasites . It can only be eaten safely after being fully cooked . While you are enjoying your meal, you must pay attention to food safety. Remember the following twelve-word motto:

Thoroughly cooked! Thoroughly cooked! Thoroughly cooked!

Author:berlika

This article comes from the Species Calendar, welcome to forward

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