Irish Mussels

This recipe is my attempt to reverse engineer a dish from Flex Mussels, a restaurant I've never been to, and who's food I've never tried. It started out as a small shack in PEI, then to a small shack in Manhattan, to a larger shack in Manhattan. I thought it looked like a genius idea though, so why not? Mussels with Guinness, caramelized onions and toasted walnuts. Let's do this.

Here's what you need:
All the quantities here I've based on 2lb of mussels. I can eat 2lb of these myself, but as an appetizer, plan on about 1lb per person
2 lb mussels (east coast, PEI are great)
1 Can of Guinness for mussels, 1 Can for the Cook
1 white onion, chopped
Sugar
Walnuts, chopped
Vegetable oil

Here's what you do:
1) Toast/Roast your walnuts at for 10 minutes at 350F. Just spread them out on a pan and toss em in, nothing to it
2) In a large iron skillet, put your onions in and a bit of vegetable oil, enough to coat the bottom of the skillet. (Why veg-oil and not olive? Well veg-oil has a higher smoking point, better for this purpose. Now you know.) Turn to medium heat and give the onions a stir to coat everything with oil and let them sizzle. In about 10 miuntes, when they start to begin caramelizing, I like to add a bit of sugar as a catalyst, and for overall deliciousness. So just sprinkle some in and stir it around.
3) While your onions are caramelizing, and your walnuts are toasting, take this time to clean your mussels. Debearding is easy, just pull the stringy stuff towards the flat opening of the mussel and give it a good tug to remove it. Throw away any mussels with cracked shells, and any mussels that are open, give them a good whack on the counter. If they close up, you can eat them, if not, that means the mussel is dead and you should throw it away. Don't be a hero.
4) After about 25-30 minutes of good solid onion caramelization, we get to the easy part. (Yeah, it gets even easier!) Dump in your can of Guinness, your toasted walnuts and your mussels and give it a good stir. Now all you have to do is wait for the mussels to open up and you're done. I like to stir up the skillet while the mussels are cooking, that way it gives the beer and onions a chance to seep into the mussels and really get a nice flavour goin' on there.

Easy as that. You can even serve the mussels right out of the skillet to the waiting masses. It's got that nice, form follows funciton feel...forever. Five F's...or was that 7?! My skillet has high enough sides that I could probably fit about 3 lbs mussels max, any more than that and you'd need to tranfer the ingredients to a pot, but everything still works the same.

A note on the toasted walnuts. They're great as a snack, I find myself just buying them and toasting them to have around the house.

These mussels paired with the belgian frites (a.k.a. moules et frites) are dyy-noo-miiite.

Enjoy!

Drink: Harp Lager (you could also go with Guinness, I just figured you might want to switch it up a bit, and you get the nice hoppiness of a pale lager)
Listen: Kings of Leon, Only By The Night