If you are buying the mussels from the fishmonger, they probably won't be in too bad a state, but if you buy them by the seaside or gather them yourself from the rocks, they'll need a very thorough going over.
Fill the sink with cold water and one by one scrub the mussels, removing barnacles and tugging off the "beard".
If any of the mussels are already open and don't close when you tap them, discard them as they are dead and could be bad. You'll need to inspect mussels that are unusually heavy, as these are usually full of sand when you open them.
Rinse thoroughly several times before cooking as you really don't want a mouthful of grit.
Don't leave live mussels standing too long in fresh water, or they will die and be useless.
Although they need a bit of work before you get to the cooking stage, mussels are ridiculously easy to cook.
How to cook mussels
If your dish requires cooked mussels already out of their shells, here's how to cook them.
Heat an inch/couple of centimetres of cooking liquid in a large pan - this can be wine, water, or stock with added herbs and chopped onions - until it is boiling fast.
Tip in the mussels, clamp on the lid, shake the pan and in a couple of minutes' time, check to see if most of them are open. Put on the lid again and give them just a minute more, having shaken the pan, and then discard any mussels that have failed to open.
Drain off the mussels, reserving the cooking liquid, which your recipe will normally require, once you have strained it to remove any traces of grit. Shell the mussels.
For Moules Marinieres all you are basically doing is the simple cooking method above, then transforming the delicious cooking liquid into a kind of soup that forms an integral part of the dish.
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