Cooking Up Conch Salad on Harbour Island

Conch salad  fittingly represents the breezy, easygoing Bahamian lifestyle and you will find the delicacy everywhere on Harbour Island, the tiny island two miles East of Eleuthera. Located along the waterfront, Queen Conch is the Harbour Island headquarters for a daily dose of fresh conch salad.

A conch (konk) is a mollusk that's basically a marine snail.. First the insides are scooped out of the rosy shell.

A special knife is used to scrape the wiggling meat out of the shell, which sometimes hides large pink pearls.

The basic ingredients for a conch salad are tomato, onion, green pepper, lime juice and at Queen Conch, sour orange juice, which is a cross between a lime and an orange.  A special pepper sauce is also added for a zesty kick.

A large knife is used to swiftly cut up all the ingredients before your eyes.

Then the salad is scooped into a plastic container with a spoon. Conch salad is refreshing and mild, it tastes like a chewier verion of ceviche.  Bahamians love conch any kind of way, including conch fritters, cracked conch, conch burgers and conch chowder. The conch is reputed to be an aphrodesiac and is consumed so often that its considered an endagered species throughout the Caribbean. This doesn't stop Harbrour Island natives however, they swear that conch salad is the best way to enjoy their diet staple.

This post is part of Wander Food Wednesdays. Check out the other taste sensations around the world.