Roasted Oysters with Bacon and Parmesan

I am, by default, a raw oyster absolutist. Give me an immaculate oyster – fresh out of cold water, well-shelled, still slippery with its own briny liquor – and I want nothing more than to tilt the shell to my lips and let it speak for itself. No hot sauce, no mignonette, no horseradish. Just salt, sea and place. This clean, mineral water – cold water and pure sea – is the merroir: the oyster equivalent of the terroir, where geography is expressed directly in the flavor.

That’s why I surprised even myself when I fell in love with a roasted oyster. It happened in Homer, Alaska, at the Broken Oar Oyster Bar attached to the Kachemak Shellfish Growers Co-Op, during a press trip to Alaska to learn about its fledgling oyster industry. The dock overlooks the cold, white waters where the oysters are pulled that same day. Earlier, I had eaten what might be the best raw oyster of my life: a freshly shucked specimen from Jakolof Bay, handed to me by Lindsay Fowler of Spinnaker Bay Farms as I stood in my wellies on a cool September afternoon. The Chugach Mountains loomed behind us. The oyster was bright and incredibly clean, with a fresh cucumber finish and a salinity that tasted like seawater filtered by melting snow.

So when someone suggested I try one of the bar’s specialties, their roasted oysters, I reluctantly agreed, fully expecting to confirm my long-held belief that cooking oysters, especially the best ones, is pointless at best and sacrilege at worst.

Reader, I was wrong. The roasted oyster arrived bubbling, topped with a bacon and parmesan topping that frankly sounded like too much – it immediately brought to mind Oysters Rockefeller. But as soon as I tasted it, I understood it. The oyster flavor didn’t disappear as I expected under the bold topping; he got up. Its briny sweetness contrasts with the richness of the cheese, the smoky salty taste of the bacon, the buttery fat. The garnish amped up the oyster instead of overpowering it. It was over-the-top, indulgent, flavorful and festive in just the right way. It was nice to eat it at a quayside bar with a cold beer, but it would be just as nice to enjoy it at midnight on New Year’s Eve with champagne in hand.

Choosing the right oysters

I knew right away that I wanted to recreate it at home. This recipe is my attempt to do just that, using techniques that make sense for home cooking while preserving what made these oysters so memorable. The first key is the size of the oyster. Look for oysters on the larger side (about 3 inches long) so that they are meaty and plump enough to hold up to the rich filling and stable enough to stay securely in the shell without wobbling. Small oysters tend to get lost under the sauce. For the oysters tested and photographed here, I used oysters from Alaska’s Seagrove, which are bright, clean and crisp, with a fresh cucumber finish that holds up beautifully to the rich topping.

Freshness matters too: look for tightly closed shells with a clean ocean scent. If an oyster smells “fishy” before cooking, it won’t improve with bacon and cheese.

How to Keep Oysters Stable While Roasting

The next tip is stability when roasting them. The oysters should sit level with the oven so that their liquor stays in place and the topping browns rather than slides. In restaurants, this problem is usually solved with a thick bed of rock salt that cradles each shell. At home, you don’t need to buy a box of salt just for this: crumpled up foil works just as well. It creates a custom cradle for each shell and keeps everything stable under the grill.

Tips for shucking oysters

To safely shuck oysters, I like to hold the oyster steady on the counter, folded in a clean kitchen towel, then gently push the tip of an oyster knife into the tight hinge and twist it – using finesse rather than force, which is how most shucking injuries occur. Run the knife along the inside of the top shell to release it, then carefully detach the oyster from the bottom shell while keeping as much of the briny liquor inside as possible.

Once the oyster is released, there is a small action that makes a big difference in how it eats and how it looks. At this point, carefully flip the oyster in its shell so that the plump side is up. It’s a little “chef’s kiss” gesture that I learned from Chef Mandy Dixon of Tutka Bay Lodge in Homer, Alaska. “It’s just an easy way to get a prettier final presentation,” she told me, while casually sharing years of oyster shucking wisdom. The flipped oyster creates a natural cradle for the filling, helping it to pile up neatly and cook evenly instead of sliding around.

The garnish that amplifies

The garnish is designed to amplify the oyster, not bury it. Instead of lightly sprinkling ingredients over the oysters, everything is turned into a cohesive, emulsified mixture: crispy bacon, parmesan, butter, cream, mustard, garlic, parsley and panko. The result is thick, glossy and easy to use, closer to a flavorful Hollandaise sauce than a breadcrumb crust. This cohesion ensures each oyster has the same balanced bite and prevents the filling from melting and pooling in the pan.

Grilling the oysters quickly, until the topping is bubbling and browning, warms them without crowding the meat. The high, direct heat ensures that the filling browns on top while the oysters remain plump and juicy underneath, which is harder to achieve with longer cooking.

Done well, the oysters remain tender, their liquor mixing with the shell sauce. They are delicious, rich and revealing in the best way possible.

I still believe that a very large oyster needs no decoration. But I also believe that there is room, especially during celebrations, for a little excess. These roasted oysters are proof that more can be more, without losing sight of what makes oysters special in the first place. Every time I make them, I’m back on that dock in Homer, tasting the cold water, the clean air, and the unexpected joy of being joyfully and deliciously wrong.