Matsu Mussels 淡菜
Matsu Mussels is featured among the local specialties of Taiwan.
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Matsu Mussels (淡菜) are the blue mussels (Mytilus edulis) of the Matsu Islands (马祖), Lienchiang County (连江县), Taiwan. Taiwan's Ministry of Culture, on its National Cultural Memory Bank curation platform, calls the mussel the main commercial shellfish of the Matsu area and presents it as a summer ingredient. In Taiwan the species is also called zikecaige (紫壳菜蛤); dancai is its common name.
Where it comes from
Matsu once sold only wild mussels, gathered in summer. July and August are the season when the mussels mature, and islanders went out at low tide with iron hooks and baskets to pick them from the rocks.
From 1981 the county government subsidised and encouraged fishermen to farm them. The farms use hanging longlines with floats and net bags: every May to August, young mussels of 1 to 3 cm are collected, packed about 500 g to a nylon net bag, and hung in deep water at the mouths of bays. After a year to a year and a half each bag weighs about 2.5 kg, and each mussel is about 10 cm long.
How it is eaten
Summer is when the farmed mussels are plumpest; in cold weather or when food in the water is poor they become visibly thin. The Ministry of Culture names steaming as the method that best keeps their fresh flavour: the two shells are pulled apart, the whole piece of meat comes away in the hand, and it is dipped in shrimp oil (虾油).
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.