What colour should mussels be when cooked?

I just cooked 1.5kg of green mussles in a pot and afterward about 1/2 of them are a pink/orange colour and the other 1/2 are look more like white. I am wondering is it supposed to be like that? I remember the 1s I've had at restaurants have usually had a bit of colour to them

 

When cooked, they should be open. Doesn't matter what colour they are.

 

White and white creamy + orange is fine. It depends on their stage of development...

For some reason I much prefer black to green mussels..

 

The orange meat is found in the shell of a mature female mussel, whilst the pale cream meat mussels are males or immature females.

http://www.helpwithcooking.com/seafood-shellfish/guide-to-mussels.html

The females are tastier.

 

I've heard that there's some newer research on this and it's not neccesarily the case. The real guide to mussels and indeed any seafood is your nose.

 

It's all Jane Grigson's fault. It's fine to open and eat closed mussels so long as they didn't pong before you cooked them. Yay science!

 

i've been hearing this a lot lately on various cooking show's and even though i believe it to be true, personally i still just chuck them out.

 

yeah, closed ones go out for me. I *could* sit there doing an open-and-sniff but IMO it's not worth it. you only have to score one dodgy one to be up driving the porcelain bus at 3am and having done that once off a dodgy oyster I hold my seafood to high standard.

 

I've always ditched closed mussels myself.

 

Hmm, I just googled it and you are right!

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/10/29/2404364.htm