so like i said i really had no idea what i was getting into when i headed over to waka iere for happy hour. i arrived as jen was returning with a conch and there was a debate over wether we should open it on board or on the beach. on board won, which was a good thing as even in the “comfort” of the cockpit it was a major job! i was sent back to palapa for some lime which is apparently the antidote for the conch “slime”. when i returned sietes had the vice grips on the conch and he seemed only minutes away from pulling it our. alas this was not to be!
below you can see a better view of the vice grips. acording to jen this is not that usefull as the chonch can release its “door” at any point it decides it is getting pulled to far out of its shell.
One thing Sietse was sudo sucessfull at was de-sliming the chonch. here you see the slime dripping out into the water. of chorse there was even more slime inside!
initially we tried to just pull the conch out with the vice grips but as predicted this failed. instead sietse spent about an1 hour of beeting on the conch with a screv driver and hammer. aparently if you put a hole right between the 2nd and 3rd row of prongs you hit the muscell and the chonch releases. we had 3 or 4 holes by the time we got the release and the only way we got this to work was to bend the screwdriver around making the 3 holes become one!
here is an exert from a great vidio of some of the pounding but alas, i have yet to figure out how to get this up.
here you see the actual extraction. if you look carefully you can actually see the two eyes and the mouth in the picture below.
finally we had the whole chonch out of the shell and we wasted no time throwing the slimy shell overboard. you can see it looks like a good amount of meat which it is. i think jen made 3 days worth of conch dishes with this guy!
the next step was too cut too remove the none edible parts of the conch easier said than done, as you can see this results in a lot of slime all over your hands. for those of you planning to try this, there is a black vein running the length of the conch that is the digestive track. you make a kit into the conch following this dark line and remove everything. you then remove the eyes and other yuky stuff and throw it overboard. we actually dumped the bits into a bucket of slat water and then rinsed the good bits off. in the end your dresser is covered in slime and has to rub lime juice on their hands to neutralize it (more or less)
the next step is to cut it into VERY THIN pieces. conch is very tough and has to be tenderized with a hammer like abalone. you can see jen’s hand in the photo indicating the slices are not thin enough!
finally we where ready for the tenderization process. you can see the multi function hammer that we used to bash the screw driver into the conch also doubles as a conch tenderizer. you can also see by the change in lighting how long this whole process took, i am guessing 2 hours from conch arrival at the boat to conch in the belly!
finally the finished product. jen was nice enough to fry up a bit of this as a sampler for us. i even brought some back to palapa for aimee.
stay tuned for more conch meals over the next few days!
cheers roger
Dear Roger, I tried to write you an account of OUR (your Mother and my) conch experience on a “Sailing Adventure” trip in the Bahamas MANY years ago, but your comment system compained about my email address being invalid and then immediately dumped my text and all (without giving me a chance to check or correct it!), so I’ll see if THIS gets thru before going through all THAT again! Love, Dad H.
hi dad, this got through, you going to try the actual comment? cheers – rch
OK, here is an easy method to remove conch as an alternative to the make a hole between the 2nd and 3rd ring method, BTW, with the hole method you insert a knife and cut the gripping muscle and it all comes out quite easily (said, not done). BUT this next “hanging” method DOES work if you have the time and does not require any special tools. Just tie or hook a string into the claw and let him hang from that string for about a day. The shell will just fall off. Not sure what this does to the meat? But at least the shell remains intact.