Soups
Mussel soup with saffron and spaghetti
A Provençal mussel soup with saffron, leeks, tomato and broken spaghetti, served with garlic croutons and rouille. A quick fish soup with a bouillabaisse feel.
Published · Updated
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 30 min
- Total
- 1 h
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- Easy
Method
Scrub the mussels under cold running water and pull off the beards. Discard any with broken shells, and any open ones that do not close when tapped firmly.
Put the saffron to soak in 2 tablespoons of warm water.
Heat the olive oil in a large heavy-based pot over medium heat. Add the onion, leeks and celery and cook gently for 8 minutes, stirring, until soft but not coloured. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
Add the tomatoes and the bouquet garni and simmer for 5 minutes, until the tomatoes have broken down.
Meanwhile, put the mussels and the white wine in another large pot, cover and cook over high heat for 3–5 minutes, shaking the pot now and then, until the shells open. Tip into a colander set over a bowl to catch the juices, and discard any mussels that stay closed.
Strain the mussel juices through a fine sieve lined with a paper towel or cloth to remove any grit. Keep about 20 mussels in their half shells and take the rest out of their shells.
Pour the water, the strained mussel juices and the saffron with its soaking water into the vegetable pot. Bring to the boil, add the spaghetti and simmer until tender, 8–10 minutes depending on the pasta.
Remove the bouquet garni and taste for salt, which may not be needed. Take the pot off the heat, add all the mussels and stir gently for 1 minute to warm them through without boiling. Season with pepper.
Serve in warm bowls with a drizzle of olive oil, the garlic croutons, rouille and grated cheese on the side.
Tips
- Salt only at the end. The mussel juices are often salty enough on their own.
- Never let the soup boil once the mussels are in, or they turn rubbery.
- Saffron threads give more flavour than powder and let you see what you are using. Buy from a reliable source; cheap powdered saffron is often cut with other spices.
- Broken spaghetti can be replaced by vermicelli, which cooks in 3–4 minutes.
Watch it being made
Deliciously Golden Saffron Mussel Soup" | Mediterranean recipe finale — French Cooking Academy (YouTube). The player loads only when you press play.
A fish soup for every day
Along the Provençal coast, soup has always been the way to make a little seafood feed a whole family. Bouillabaisse is the famous, festive version; this mussel soup is its everyday cousin. It takes the same flavours — olive oil, leek, tomato, garlic and saffron — and the same way of serving, with croutons and rouille, but it is ready in under an hour and needs only one kind of shellfish.
The pasta is a sign of where Nice lies. The Comté de Nice only became French in 1860, and its cooking has always borrowed from Italy as much as from Provence. A handful of broken spaghetti turns the broth into a complete meal, much as the pasta does in a soupe au pistou.
Choosing the ingredients
- Mussels: buy them the day you cook them, from a fishmonger who keeps them cold. They should smell of the sea, feel heavy and be tightly closed or close when tapped. Rope-grown mussels, such as those farmed in the Mediterranean lagoons of Languedoc, are usually cleaner and need less scrubbing than wild ones.
- Saffron: only a pinch is needed, but it must be real saffron. The threads should be deep red; soaking them in a little warm water before use draws out their colour and aroma.
- Leeks: use only the white and pale green part, and rinse the slices well, as grit collects between the layers.
- Tomatoes: ripe summer tomatoes are best. Out of season, a few spoonfuls of good canned peeled tomatoes do the job.
Variations
Some cooks add a small peeled potato, diced, with the leeks, which gives the broth more body. A strip of orange zest or a pinch of fennel seed in the bouquet garni brings it closer to bouillabaisse. The spaghetti can be left out for a lighter starter, in which case serve more croutons. Clams or small shrimp can be cooked with the mussels.
Serving
Bring the pot to the table and let everyone help themselves. Put out a bowl of rouille, a plate of croutons rubbed with garlic and a little grated cheese: spread rouille on a crouton, float it in the soup and eat it as it softens. A chilled white wine from the coast suits it well. On a cold evening, the garlic-and-sage aiga boulida is another Provençal soup worth knowing.
Questions & answers
Can I use frozen mussels?
Frozen cooked mussels work in a pinch, but the soup loses the flavour of their fresh juices. If you use them, replace part of the water with a light fish stock and add the mussels at the very end.
What should I do with mussels that do not open?
Throw them away. Mussels that stay firmly closed after cooking may have been dead before cooking.
Can I prepare the soup in advance?
You can make the vegetable base a few hours ahead. Cook the pasta and add the mussels just before serving, or the spaghetti will swell and the mussels overcook.
