炒螺丝 Spicy Snails

Pinyin: chǎo luó sī

I have no love for the snail. Simply a slug with a shell, the edible variety lives in shallow pools of murky water eating a variety of plankton and carrying with them a variety of parasite’s that humans can host. The snails pictured above were roughly the size of golf balls and likely originated from fish farms outside Shanghai.

The shells were cracked by the cook so that the the sauce could get inside and fully flavor the meat. The sauce was based off of a sweet and syrupy kind of pork dish and supplemented with pepper oil. To eat them you’ve got use toothpicks or other utensils to pull the meat out of the shell then you’ve got to separate out the foot and throw the rest away. The dish was spicy and the meet tasted a bit like intestines or something similar. It also seemed a bit muddy.

I’ve had snails only a few times and I’ve never been impressed. They can be challenging to eat, and they just aren’t that tasty. Psychologically I find it a little hard to eat snails as I know they’ve been crawling along riverbeds and other rather polluted areas in China. Try these if you must, but be warned. I have no love for the snail.