Went oystering earlier this week. In the process of gathering oysters, we found quite a few clams. My son wanted to take some home but, since I did not know what to do with them, I said no. Anyone want to share how you clean/prepare clams once you get them?
Thanks
“Apathy is the Glove in Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”.
take them home! you want to purge them in fresh water for a while(gets the sand out of them) and rince the off well. Put them in a sautee pan with a little bit of oil med/high heat untill they start to open(shake them every so often). add 1 cup white wine, 3 cloves chopped garlic, chopped parsley 1/4 bunch, 3 oz butter and reduce by half s/p to taste(pinch red pepper flake). If a clam dosent open dont try to open it in the sauce it could be full of mud. after that you can go anwhere with that base sauce add chopped tomato, capers, olives, rendered bacon - pasta/gnocchi/orzo
Key West Stealth
150 V-max
A lot of the clams I find while oystering are of the larger variety, and the general rule with clams is larger=tougher, smaller=more tender. If I wrap my thumb and middle finger around the circumference and they just barely touch, that’s about perfect. That said, there are a few different ways I’ve prepared them. First, clean them thoroughly making sure to get all sand/mud off the shell and out from the hinge area, then place them in a bowl of salt water for ~30 minutes to let them “purge”. This helps remove any grit.
Next, you can try shucking them raw, but I’ve never had any luck with this and always end up with slivers of broken shell in the meat. I always steam them to at least open them up, and more often than not just eat them steamed over fettuccini. To do this, melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan over medium heat, lightly saut? 4-5 cloves of crushed garlic in the butter, then add enough white wine to cover the bottom of the pan. Add your clams and cover. After a few minutes, the clams will start opening and their juices will add to the liquid in the pan. Remove them when they open, place over a bed of fettuccini, pour the liquid from the pan over the top and enjoy.
If you want to get a little fancier, you can make clams casino. Steam them the same as above, then remove half the shell. Place the half with the meat on a baking sheet. Fry a few strips of bacon until 3/4 done. Remove and set aside. Saut? finely chopped onion, red pepper, celery and garlic in the bacon grease over medium heat. Top the clams with this mixture. Make another mixture of bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and soft butter and divide this among the clams. Top each one with a piece of bacon. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes. Delicious.
Or you can just use them for sheepshead bait.
big clams = chowda
lil clams = zeppelin’s recipe.
Go to Wild Olive on johns island and order their clams - they are unbelievable.
steam until the shells open, eat until I feel like I’m going to explode. A little Cross & Blackwell for dipping
Boat drinks, Waitress I need 2 more boat drinks!
We just through them in with the oysters.
purging is good especially if they come out of sandy ground.
steamed in wine and herbs with crusty bread for dipping is my wife’s favorite.
i’ll share the best tip ever for preparing chowder clams, which comes from my wife’s grandmother: freeze them in the shell. when you pull them out, whether the next day or 2 months later, run them briefly under lukewarm water- I like to use a colander. when the shells warm up a bit, they pop right open which leaves a perfect lump of meat and frozen “likker” that simply falls out into a bowl. you get all the good stuff and no chips of shell from painstaking raw shucking. they can be chopped in a food processor frozen or thawed… cut into strips and fried… stuck on a hook for sheeps… now tell your son to go find where he left those clams 
Thanks for all the info. The ones we saw were all fairly large (child’s fist size and bigger). Do you eat everything inside like an oyster or just the mussel part like a scallop?
“Apathy is the Glove in Which Evil Slips It’s Hand”.
When steamed we eat the entire thing like an oyster, but if we’re going to fry them I usually trim out the muscle only. Doesn’t matter much, they are good either way.
Capt. Larry Teuton
Cracker Built Custom Boats
“Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made.” -Robert N. Rose
I like to steam in rice cooker. Watch carefully, if you remove them once shell opens I think they taste much better.softer and have that nice salty taste to them
Ol’ barbawang took the words out of my mouth…went out and got some today. Going to purge them tomorrow, freeze and cut the big ones up for clam strips. The little ones are getting drunk.
Barbawang, your wife’s grandmother is a genius. Thank you for sharing that tip, it will be used!!
Saying “I am offended” is telling everyone else that you cannot control your own emotions, and thus you need everyone else to do it for you.