A Christ­mas tra­di­tion in my wife’s fam­i­ly is to serve oys­ter stew on Christ­mas Eve, with the men doing the cooking.

For years, this task fell to my wife’s Uncle George. One year he was hum­ming along, the oys­ters had been but­ter poached, the milk was near­ly hot enough, and he reached for the ground white pep­per to light­ly sea­son it before declar­ing it ready to eat.

Dis­as­ter! The shak­er top on the white pep­per jar came off and he dumped most of the con­tents of the jar into the pot. George tried to scoop out as much of it as he could with his fin­gers, but the soup was hot and the pep­per, which was hard to spot since it was white, dis­persed quick­ly. (The main rea­son for using white pep­per is that it does­n’t cre­ate lit­tle black flecks in the soup.)

The kitchen quick­ly filled up with men work­ing des­per­ate­ly to res­cue the soup, each with a dif­fer­ent solu­tion, of course.

First, we added more milk and turned up the heat to bring it up to temp. The warmer it got, the stronger the pep­per fla­vor got. More milk + more heat = even more pep­per fla­vor. A half an hour and two gal­lons of milk lat­er, we had a big pot of soup that tast­ed more like pep­per than oysters.

Expe­ri­enced cooks should rec­og­nize the prob­lem imme­di­ate­ly. Pep­per, espe­cial­ly white pep­per, gets hot­ter as it warms up. So every time we raised the tem­per­a­ture of the oys­ter stew, the pep­per got hotter.

So, what do you do to res­cue the soup? It’s 7PM on Christ­mas Eve, all the stores are closed, so you can’t run out and buy more oysters.

The solu­tion we even­tu­al­ly came up with was to add some thin­ly sliced and rinsed pota­toes and cook them for a while in the hot soup, then take them out. Pota­toes absorb spices, so this brought down the pep­pery fla­vor of the soup–at least enough that the soup was more or less edi­ble, with­out mak­ing it taste like pota­to soup. About an hour after din­ner was planned, we final­ly ate the oys­ter stew. (Most of the women and chil­dren. and one or two of the men, had already giv­en up and had a bowl of the tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas Eve alter­nate soup for those who don’t eat oys­ter stew–a mild chili. See Foot­ball Chili for the recipe.)

It occurred to me a few years lat­er, by which time I had tak­en over this annu­al Christ­mas Eve task, that a bet­ter approach might have been to strain out the oys­ters, rinse off any obvi­ous pep­per on them, add a small amount of the pep­per-laden soup liq­uid (to restore some of the oys­ter liquor fla­vor) and add fresh milk and some but­ter. Elim­i­nat­ing most of the pep­per should have worked at least as well as adding 2 gal­lons of milk did.

Here’s my vari­a­tion of the fam­i­ly Oys­ter Stew recipe. (I use fresh­ly ground black pep­per, though. Use white pep­per if you pre­fer, but make sure the shak­er top is on firmly!)

Oys­ter Stew

1 pint fresh oys­ters (Some stores will give you the oys­ters almost dry, make sure you get some of the liquor.)
³⁄₄ cup butter
¹⁄₂ to 1 gal­lon milk
Salt to taste
Pep­per to taste

Check the oys­ters for shell frag­ments. (I do this with my fin­gers.) I’ve also got­ten oys­ters that had sand in them. Rinse as needed.

Melt the but­ter over a low heat. Add the oys­ters and half of the liquor. Stir gen­tly as the oys­ters poach in the warm but­ter. They’re done when the ridges (man­tles) are ful­ly sep­a­rat­ed and the oys­ters are soft enough to cut with a spoon. Add the rest of the oys­ter liquor, but make sure the dregs don’t have any shell frag­ments or sand in it. I usu­al­ly throw out the last table­spoon or so, just in case.

Add the milk in stages, turn­ing up the heat slight­ly, but don’t let it boil. Start adding salt and pep­per after about half of the milk has been added. Remem­ber, the pep­per WILL get stronger as it heats up, just ask Uncle George!

Hap­py Hol­i­days from My Nebras­ka Kitchen!

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