One of those legendary tapas that have been losing prominence over the last few years. My guess? It’s food industry’s fault: food companies offer an easy and cheap way to serve this tapa, but the quality is far from homemade. Nowadays, it feels rare to find a bar that makes them from scratch, which is why it’s almost never worth ordering them.
A couple of weeks ago, in my hometown, I had the best tigres I’ve eaten in a long time. They inspired me to develop the very best tiger mussel recipe to share with you here. Honestly, I can promise these will be some of the best tigres you’ve ever had 🥵😎
RECIPE:
50g butter
50g flour
500g whole milk
70g liquid from cooking the mussels
100g homemade tomato sauce
70g prawns
150g mussel meat (from 750g of mussels with shells)
13g anchovies
A bunch of chopped parsley
Tabasco, for fun
Salt to taste (at the very end, since the mussels and anchovies already bring plenty of salt)
Start by opening the mussels: Clean them a little bit and remove that annoying seaweed that they all have (its what they use to attach themselves to rocks, in spanish we refer to it as barbas -beards- lol). Warm up a glass of wine in a pot. When the wine is boiling, drop in the mussels, cover, and count 2 minutes. Drain and reserve the liquid for extra flavor in the bechamel later. Separate the mussels from their shells and save the shells.
Blend the mussel meat, prawns, and anchovies into a coarse paste.
Make the béchamel as usual: melt the butter, toast the flour in it for a couple of minutes, and then gradually add the milk while whisking vigorously. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook over low heat for 20–30 minutes. The longer and slower you cook your béchamel, the smoother and tastier it will be.
Cool the bechamel down and fill the shells helping yourself with a spoon, like shown in the video. Last step is to coat the tigres with flour → egg → breadcrumbs to later fry at 190°C for 1-2 minutes.

source