Hi, chicks!

I am a seafood horse. Unfortunately, I live in a totally landlocked area and seafood is outrageously expensive here. However, today I was roaming around Wal-mart and stumbled upon a two pound bag of frozen pre-cooked mussels for $3.50! Wow! I definitely had to take advantage of THAT.

So I did.

My question now is...how should I prepare these puppies? They appear to be in full shell, which is a bit confusing. The side of the bag says to boil them in the vacuum sealed bag straight from frozen (mostly just to heat them up, I think.) My problem is, I don't really want to eat mussels plain. (And I'm not sure how long they will keep after-wards, but that's another issue entirely.)

I'm just wondering if anyone has any ideas in regards to more interesting preparation? I'd like to apply some kind of tasty sauce, but I'm wary of turning a relatively moderate calorie food into something disasterous to my dieting.

Thanks for the help, guys! I'm really looking forward to eating these tasty morsels.

I don't have that much experience cooking them, usually I eat them at restaurants. In the Mediterranean countries they are usually prepared really simply, sauteed or simmered with oil and garlic -- mussels go really well with garlic. I'm not sure how you would handle that if you are supposed to keep them in the bag. Because if you overcook them they can get rubbery. Maybe just defrost them and then take them out of the bag? You could sautee some garlic in whatever oil you like to use, and toss them with it. The shells add a lot of flavor, that's partly why they're left in. Then you toss them over pasta, and you shell them as you eat. It's very a impressive presentation, but does take a bit of fiddling to get them out of the shell, so don't serve them the first time at a very formal meal! A lot of people put them whole into seafood stews too, with lots of other fish and shellfish. You need lots of napkins for that, and an extra bowl for the shells.

I've also had them in a tomato-based sauce, which is good but don't wear a light colored shirt.

With the shells the 2lb might not go very far, you could have a couple of friends over for pasta and that would take care of it.

Found this basic recipe on Chowhound; you would have to skip the mussel-cooking part and just toss the defrosted mussels for a minute or two to warm them.
Basics: how to steam mussels

Someone on the Chowhound boards recommended this, which sounds fairly low-cal if you use reduced fat coconut milk. Thai-style mussels with coconut milk and lemongrass

OK, now I want mussels too.

I bought some from there once and they were packed in a vac pack bag (inside a box) but they were not precooked. The steam from inside the shells helped the vac bag to expand as necessary to make room for them to open while cooking.

They were the green shell mussels from New Zealand. There was a recipe on the package that I followed and it was delicious. It called for diced tomatoes, onions sauteed in olive oil, and white wine. I can't remember if there were any other ingredients, but the whole thing took about 5 minutes to put together, then a few more minutes for the mussels to cook and it was done. I placed the cooked mussels in the pan with the tomato mixture. It was fantastic

I always like the one's in a spicy tomato sauce...so I'd throw some red pepper flakes in with Suzanne3FC's suggestion