Small, slimy, but delicious, the snail is an animal considered by many in different cultures as a delicacy, and Spain is no exception to this rule, whether in dishes such as caracoles a la madrileña or espadrilles.

Although rare to see in paellas or rice dishes in modern restaurants, it is an additional ingredient for paella quite typical to see in the countryside and mountain villages, where there is rarely a lack of chopsticks on the table to taste this delicacy with the rice of the day.

In this blog post, we are going to take a look at how to prepare snails for paella.

Should I prepare my snails if I buy them at the supermarket?

Before starting we must clarify that the process of preparing snails is only necessary if we have them alive. In case you have bought them in a supermarket, frozen, vacuum packed or even in a jar, you do not need to do this process, because these snails have already been cleaned beforehand.

Otherwise, if you want to do it in a more traditional and natural way, you can follow the next steps:

How to prepare snails for paella

Food purging

The preparation of live snails for consumption and use in paella is quite long, but this does not mean that the reward after all the necessary processes is not worth it, on the contrary.

First of all, the snails must be purged before consumption, in this way, we eliminate from their intestines any kind of substance or food that they have ingested and that can be harmful to our health.

The process to follow is to isolate the snails for 5 days or a week, so that their organism eliminates everything ingested. The most traditional way is to gather them all in a fine net and hang them over the air with a string or on the wall, preferably in an open place where you can give them some air, where we will fast them. During this process, we will continue to feed them with food of our choice.

During these days, they can be fed with lettuce, rosemary, thyme, flour, pieces of bread or just water, this selection of food will also serve us not only to know that they have not eaten anything strange when we go to cook them, but also to fatten them and to obtain a more delicious flavor if we feed them, for example, with rosemary.

Snail cleaning

When the purging period has passed, we introduce the mollusk in a container with warm salted water, you can leave them to soak or pass them through it multiple times to remove the remains of dirt from the shell and mucus of the snail.

Once soaked, clean with cold water, we recommend repeating this process up to four times or until the water with which we washed it is clean.

Blanching the snails

Once our snails are clean, put them in a pot or saucepan with warm water on a low heat. You must wait until they have come out of their shells, so that when you cook them, they stay out of it.

At that point, we turn up the heat to cook them. It is likely that some will not come out of their shells, so you will need toothpicks to be able to remove the snail meat and eat it.

After this process, the meat will have become harder and we can put the snail in our paella without risk of poisoning.

How and when do we introduce the snails in the paella?

The key moment to add the snails to the paella can vary according to personal taste.

We can add them together with the sofrito, where we will mix it with the tomato and the rest of the ingredients, allowing it to infuse with flavour. But we can also add them to the paella once the water begins to boil.

Frequently asked questions

What variety of snail is used for paella?

The snail, like many other animals, has multiple species or varieties, something that, in my case, I learned with my father in the fields, where shortly after the rain stopped, we went out to look for snails among the leaves and bushes that came out to eat.

The favorite snail for a paella is the one known as Vaquetes or mountain snail, a large snail, which means that there is much more meat to enjoy once cooked.

Why is snail not used so much in paellas today?

The reason why it is not common to see snails in paellas is due to multiple factors that can be summarized in three points:

- Obtaining snails for paella can be difficult if you do not know which store to get them from or do not intend to go looking for them yourself in the fields and mountains, in addition, they are a somewhat expensive ingredient, especially if you want them alive.

- The preparation time for snails is long, unless they have been obtained from a store that already had them prepared, the purging time can last at least a week. Unless you have tried them before or are really interested in tasting them, few people will have the patience to carry out this process.

- There are many people who simply do not like this mollusk, either because of its appearance or flavor, and introducing them to paella can result in a change of flavor that they are not willing to try, therefore, it is not usually included in paella in a common way in restaurants.

We hope that this brief guide has given you all the information you need to enjoy these delicious mollusks, rice cookers!