EMPIRE, La. (WGNO) – First you put your tongue on it, to steady it. Then you put your lips around it. And then – are there any children in the room?- well, you, um, how to put this delicately? You just have to suck it.
Okay- get your mind out of the gutter, and get on the boat with oyster fisherman Mitch Jurisich!
Jurisich is the owner of Jurisich Oysters, the Plaquemines Parish family business that brings as many as 200-thousand oysters to the dock per day. After spending his life surrounded by the bi-valves of the bayou, Jurisich says there is only one true way to eat a raw oyster off the shell. It must be swallowed whole, in one slurp, without allowing the shell to touch the mouth. Jurisich says that if your lips get near the outside of the shell, you’ll wind up with a mouth full of grit.
So if you want to experience what a poet once described as “kissing the sea,” you have to follow the x-rated-sounding instructions.
Watch Mitch coach me through it, and you’ll see it isn’t as easy (or nearly as sexy) as it sounds!
And by the way, it was Mitch’s daughter who came up with the Jurisich Oysters motto: “Gettin ’em in da sack since 1904.”