How to cook limpets

Limpets on a base of winkles

Limpets are really easy to cook writes Bev who recently stayed in Seymour tower with her children.

“Send the boys out to collect but really only winter months (our first-ever exception for Seymour tower). Please ask people to take only small amounts and from a wide area and to take all sizes as the females are large and the males small and I think to reproduce differently at differing stages in their lifecycle so it is important to do this or it is easy to decimate a whole population by only taking larger specimens.

Cooking is easy, some people take them out of their shells raw then take the black sac off, we found this a bit of a fiddle so just stick some garlic butter on the top and put them in a hot oven until they look done when they are coming away from the shells and garlic butter just browning. Usually, I use a snail dish or just a tiny holed muffin/petit four case making tin to hold them upside down but any small fairy cake tray will do, or even a dish of old winkle shells!

Sometimes they need a quick scrub before cooking if they have been in a sandy or weedy bucket..minimal prep really!”

Or, you can eat them raw. This is the way my Grandfather did it… Gather a limpet off a rock. Scoop it out the shell. Remove the black part and pop the pad into your mouth. Now chew and keep chewing. My Mother said he used raw limpet like a piece of chewing gum.

Bon appetit!

You can join our sea foraging and Wild vegetables of the ocean seabed walk by checking our dates page.