You have made my mouth water. They are hard to find in the US. I love them but many are squeamish about eating them.

I remember trying to eat them when I was a child. The parents showed me how to put one in the holder but when I tried, it flew onto the next table. I wanted to hide but the party there just had a good laugh.

I've enjoyed snails a few times, though honestly it seemed like little more than a fancy excuse to eat garlic butter. I was recently thinking about making them and got confused about the snail part. Canned snails are readily available, is that what I should be using? Or is the good stuff made with fresh, which I have not seen?

I used to prepare them regularly. DH, however, objected to what he referred to as "little pieces of sponge, soaked in garlic and butter." Admittedly, I'll eat just about anything with enough garlic and butter on it, so FOAS isn't exactly wrong in his observation. When I tried to cull garden snails and feed them lettuce for two weeks to "cleanse" them of whatever they picked up in the garden, well, I guess that was the last straw for DH.

Yes, you can prepare the canned snails easily.

Here is a link that might be useful: Snail ranching

This post was edited by kitchendetective on Sun, Feb 9, 14 at 16:15

I understand that if you capture your garden snails, and for a couple weeks feed them a diet of fresh rosemary or some other herb they love, you can farm and cook them.

We have acres of rosemary, covered with snails. I should go into business! Love the rosemary. It's drought resistant, keeps our hillside from sliding and makes good honey. Always blooming and bees buzz!

I doubt DH will let me farm the snails. He does think artichokes are a good excuse for eating garlic butter!

I have lots of big boneless escargot (slugs) in my garden.

Anyone want to eat some? LOL!

dcarch

I love snails. So does Moe. I have a few ways that I serve them.

~Ann

I have tried to replicate the memorable snails I had in Germany. They have been okay, but nothing like I had in Rothenburg. We went back to the same restaurant and had a creamy escargot soup that I still dream about.

I brought home an escargot plate from Germany but with my failures, it hasn't been used much.

I like the texture of snails, in addition to the garlic and butter of course. Don't make them much. We have the shells but a dish like that would be a lot better.

I like dcarch's idea. When you snail eaters finish off his slugs you can stop by my duplex for some 3 inch long leopard slugs. I've seen empty shells for sale in the grocery store, just cram these bad boys in some empty shells cook them up and go to town. :-)

Pkramer... picturing Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman"!!

First time I ever had snails, they came in a crock/container like one in the picture. Deep wells, finely chopped hazel nuts in bottom, still seriously bubbling ini LOTS of garlicky butter. LOTS of nice crusty bread is REQUIRED!!

First time I ever made them at home, from a bit of a "kit"?? Tall plastic tube with empty shells, can of snails on bottom. Seem to remember a seriously buttery/garlicky bread crumb mixture to cover opening?? There were 1-2 left that had gotten a little cold, so (being a brilliant college grad) decided a short ride in microwave would work to reheat. The steam that quickly built up in the spirals of the shells SHOT those little suckers right out of shell... no harm, no foul.

Made them once for middle school kids... tame version of whatever that TV show was where people ate all kiinds of gross stuff. Nobody HAD to try, but had several brave souls up to the task... and requests to do it again!

We love snails. Best I ever had was at a small restaurant in France. They were served in a garlic butter with tons of chopped parsley.

The chef called them Escargot Bourguignonne. Absolutely delicious.

Here is a recipe I have used

Here is a link that might be useful: Escargot in herb garlic sauce

My MIL sprinkled salt on them every morning slime-ing their way across her sidewalk. They never died just squished away. Salt does NOT kill them. Found out later that those big fat snails in So Cal are descendents from French snails brought over during the Gold Rush 1850's for food. There are snails and there are slugs. Not all are edible, or so I have read. Snails have shells, slugs do not. They both eat everything I want to grow in the garden. There is a lady "snail rancher" in California that raises them from the wild and purifies them so that she can sell them to fancy restaurants. More power to her. I agree with desertdance that they are just an excuse to eat garlic butter. There really is no taste to them at all (having eaten them steamed without).
Wild harvesting is always a gamble. But this is one is not something I want to venture into.
Nancy

There is an Korean store not far from me where they sell a few varieties of periwinkles (sea snails).

Delicious!.

dcarch