27east - East Hampton Oyster Farmer Wants To Bring Oysters Home to the Masses
Michael Wright on Aug 30, 2023
Last fall, John Nicholas took the unusual step of kicking out about half the paying tenants of the boat slips at the small marina his family had owned for decades to make way for a new oyster farming operation he was embarking on.
The 1 million oysters he is growing there are superb, he says, and flavorful in ways that are rare for local waters, thanks to the freshwater spring that feeds into the head of the small creek off Folkstone Road where his farm, the East Hampton Oyster Company, grows its oysters.
But Nicholas doesn’t see his little oyster farm as having a future as a major player in the shellfish industry. For that, he has turned to finding a way to make oysters — his own and anyone else’s — something that more people can enjoy more often, more economically and in the comfort of their own homes.
Now he has rolled out a device that he hopes will be a boon to the entire oyster growing industry, by making it easier for the average Joe to open an oyster — a chore that can be arduous, frustrating and even dangerous to the uninitiated.
“I struggled my whole life to open oysters,” he recalled. “I would go out with my dad and we’d get oysters right in front of the house. But there were not YouTube videos in those days, and I had to try to learn the hard way, and I’d hurt myself.”
While wading through the bureaucracy of transforming his family marina, Sunset Cove Marine, into an oyster farm, he was showing a nephew how to open oysters by holding the shell for him, his hand wrapped in a cloth towel, a common defense against getting stabbed by a slip of the sharp-tipped oyster knife.
“I thought to myself, ‘Why does my hand need to be here?’” Nicholas said.
He set about designing a substitute.
The East Hampton Shucker Company went live this week at easthamptonshucker.com, offering a countertop tool and accessories that allows amateur shuckers to hold an oyster perfectly still and perfectly flat, presenting the ideal position to slip a sharp oyster knife into its shell without fear of injury and without spilling any of the briney “liquor” from within that imparts so much of the flavor to the meat.
The shucking device allows a much sharper knife to be used, which makes wedging it into the hinge of an oyster shell to pry the two bivalves apart easier.
East Hampton Shucker Co. sells the knife — it has a very sharp point and a curved blade, which Nicholas says makes it easier to cleanly cut the oyster meat from the shell — for opening the oyster, as well as specially designed platter that allows freshly opened oysters to be rested on a bed of ice, without the melting ice leaving the oysters swimming in fresh water in a few minutes.
The company’s web page extols the benefits of oysters, to human health and to the health of local bays — where shellfish have been shown to have hugely beneficial impacts on water quality. Nicholas says that making oysters at home more palatable to those who find oysters palatable, by removing the struggle and the messiness, could be a benefit far beyond his own interests.
“If we can make opening oysters at home easier, it will dramatically increase the consumption of oysters and that’s good for oyster farmers,” Nicholas said. “And that would mean more oysters in the water which would mean cleaner water for everyone.”
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