You know me, always on the lookout for some kind of new food experience.
So I was at Lulworth cove (Dorset, UK) and there were these really BIG limpets on the rocks - the largest ones were about two and a half inches in diameter and quite deeply conical. I prised about half a dozen of them off and cooked them in their shells, upside down over charcoal (tipping them out onto the grill for a minute to finish them).
Texture: rather chewy and resilient, but not at all unpleasant - reminiscent of octopus or squid.
Taste: very good - salty, meaty, shellfish flavour; among the tastier items of seafood I’ve ever eaten (some of this might be down to the freshness).
An interesting side note: for the first time, I realised that limpets are just snails - I have picked them off rocks before for use as bait, but had never really thought of the creature under the shell as more than a fairly amorphous disc of an animal, but that’s just because the circular ‘foot’ is the only bit you normally see - they actually have a distinct head. (didn’t put me off eating them).
I’ve often wondered about the ediblilty of limpets. (Really, I have!) Birch Bay, where I now live, is famous for its clams. My friends and I have dug up some little clams, but we weren’t able to get the sand out. Bummer, because the meat (what you would taste through the grit) was delicious. We have a lot of oysters here as well, but I haven’t been out gathering any yet.
What I’m really waiting for is dungeness crab season! It’s open to the south, but not up in this Marine Area yet. Soon…
Until I opened this thread, I was somehow unaware that a limpet was an animal. The only definition of a limpet I knew of was the explosive devices that sink battleships. Opening this thread has made me less ignorant; admittedly it has also reduced the high regard I was holding for Mangetout’s digestive prowness.
They are more or less the same thing as abalone, just smaller; I suppose there could be a worry with natural toxicity, bacterial load or pollution, but I’ve read accounts of them being eaten, so I was fairly confident.
The good thing is that being algae grazers, rather than filter feeders, and preferring large rocks in clear water, they are usually free of grit and dirt. I wouldn’t bother with the little ones, but these were magnificent specimens.
My next camping holiday is in August in Somerset - I’m hoping to find razor shells, perhaps cockles and shrimps too, on the sandy/shingle beaches there.
I’m up for that, maybe… I’ve eaten cockles and mussels that way (with cockles, you press two of them together by the hinges and twist and they open up).
My wife’s parents, who live in Kerry (Ireland), go to the shore every Good Friday and collect shellfish including limpets, referred to in Kerry as “bornocks”. They boil them and chop the meat and put them in a chowder with a pile of other shellfish. I have eaten them and they are very tough, almost leathery. I suspect that they might be a little more tender the way Mangetout cooked them.
I suspect they’d be at their most tender if eaten raw, as ratatoskK suggests; lightly cooked, they were quite chewy, but in a good sort of way, not like chewing rubber bands or chicken tendons, more like squid rings; firm and resilient, but not rubbery.
I just tried Abalone Piccata a couple of weeks ago. Good stuff! But $13 for one two inch medallion. Thinking on going back sometime though, and just ordering three or four of them without an entree.
I had a book in the 80s titled something like “The Edible Ocean” and can remember seeing limpets featured in it. I see the OP is from England. In California, tide pools are considered by law as wildlife preserves, so I don’t think one can go along and pick up limpets from the shore for their eating pleasure.
