Thai-Style Steamed Mussels

Name: Thai-Style Steamed Mussels
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 20 min
Cuisine: Thai
Ingredients: 2 garlic cloves; 2 Thai red chili peppers, roughly chopped; 1 1-inch chunk fresh ginger; 1/2 cup cilantro leaves; Zest of 1/2 lime; 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil; 1 (13.66 fl oz) can unsweetened coconut milk; Juice of 1 lime; Salt; 2/3 cup dry white wine, or beer; 2 pounds fresh mussels, scrubbed and debearded

posted by Sharon Chen on Feb 27, 2018 (updated Aug 20, 2020) 8 comments »

Jump To Recipe

3 reviews

Quick and delicious mussels steamed in white wine along with a spicy and creamy Thai-style cooking sauce.

Quick and delicious mussels steamed in white wine along with a spicy and creamy Thai-style cooking sauce.

If you like mussels, these are not your regular steamed mussels with white wine and unsalted butter. Those mussels are cooked in either white wine or beer along with a spicy and creamy Thai-style cooking sauce. This is a very quick recipe with just a few simple steps. You can even prepare the cooking sauce ahead of time to make the cooking process even faster.

Table of Contents hide

Make The Thai Cooking Sauce
Boil Your Alcohol
Steam Fresh Mussels
Prep Ahead
Thai-Style Steamed Mussels
About the Author
- Sharon Chen

Make The Thai Cooking Sauce

The secret to this unique steamed mussel recipe is the sauce. And the ingredients used to make that special sauce are Thai chili peppers, fresh ginger, extra-virgin olive oil, fresh cilantro, lime zest, lime juice, sea salt, and coconut milk. Sounds delicious, doesn’t it?

To make the sauce, place all ingredients except for the coconut milk in a food processor. Blend until it turns into a paste. Remove the blade from your food processor or transfer the paste into a medium bowl. Whisk in the coconut milk and lime juice. Here you have your flavorful cooking sauce ready to go.

Now, let’s get cooking.

Thai-Style Steamed Mussels

Boil Your Alcohol

Choose your alcohol for this recipe. I have tried both dry white wine and beer. Both of them work really well. Whichever type of alcohol you decide to cook with, bring it to a boil over medium-high heat in a large pot. For two pounds of mussels, I used 2/3 cup dry white wine and let it boil down to 1/2 cup. If you choose beer, feel free to use up an entire can and let it boil down to 1/2 cup. It takes about 5-7 minutes.

Steam Fresh Mussels

Assuming you’ve debearded your mussels, removed the ones with broken shells, and scrubbed them clean, add the mussels into the boiling alcohol and pour the Thai cooking sauce all over. Immediately cover the pot and let it steam for about 5 minutes, shaking the pot a couple times during cooking. Check the mussels. If they are not open, cook for an additional 1-2 minutes. Discard the unopened ones.

That’s it. Your Thai-style steamed mussels are ready to be served at this point. It comes with a delicious broth that’s perfect for dipping some crusty bread. I wouldn’t be surprised if you want to straight up drink the broth because I did.

Quick and delicious mussels steamed in white wine along with a spicy and creamy Thai-style cooking sauce.

Prep Ahead

You see, making mussels are very easy and quick. Making mussels with a Thai twist is even quicker if you prepare the cooking sauce ahead of time. Just leave it in the fridge until you are ready to cook the next day.

If you are reading this post, I figured that you must be a fan of mussels. So here’s another quick mussel recipe with white wine sauce that I think you’ll like as well.

If you get a chance to make this recipe, please be sure to leave a comment below or share a photo of your creation on social media using hashtag #streetsmartkitchen, so I can see it and get excited. 😃