How to Shuck Oysters at Home - PureWow
Humans have been eating raw oysters for hundreds of thousands of years—164,000 to be exact, according to anthropologists who discovered a South African cave with evidence of shellfish and whale consumption. (The image above is a depiction of The Shell Mound People, or Kitchen-Middeners, a group of hunter gatherers who would create middens with discarded shellfish shells.) It's no different stateside, says Bethea. He tells us, "Indigenous people were not only eating oysters, but they were doing it in a sustainable way. They would build middens, which are basically piles of discarded oyster shells, by returning shellfish remains to the water. More oysters grew on those oyster shells as they put them back, which is a form of aquaculture that's called remote setting." (In case you're wondering, there are thousands upon thousands of middens still standing in coastal environments around the globe.) That said, Hughes reminds us that raw or undercooked shellfish can make