Razor Clam Digs for January

It's that time again, the WDFW has announced that the next clam digs will occur January 18 - 21, 2008, which happens to coincide with a 3-day weekend (MLKjr holiday). So its a great time to visit Westport. As a bonus, the accuweather is forecasting "brilliant sunshine" for that weekend (hey, I know the weatherfolks are almost never accurate, but we can hope right?).

So, in honor of that upcoming clam dig, I am going to publish my version of "how to clean a clam". These are by no means official instructions, I have ruined a lot of clams before I got to this point, but its how I do it.

(1) Catch your limit of 15 clams.

(2) Put said clams into a colander in the sink. An outdoor sink works well, if available, or you can do it out in your yard. You probably don't want to do this in a sink in a rental, you'll probably totally mess it up and get charged for breaking their garbage disposal or something.

(3) Boil a pot of water. Slowly pour boiling water over colander of clams. You have to have enough water to be able to get each clam for a full 2 - 3 seconds. Alternatively, if your pot is big enough, you can immerse the colander into the boiling water, and then pull it out. This is very similar to blanching vegetables. You don't want to leave it in the boiling water for too long, because it will get chewy. Once out of boiling water, rinse with cold water.

(4) The clams should have "opened up" after this. If they didn't, you either didn't expose the clam to enough hot water, or your clam is bad. My philosophy on shellfish is "when in doubt, throw it out". I know you worked hard for that clam, but you don't want to risk getting sick and ruining your trip to the beach. Some people say to cut the clams out of their shell at this point, but I have found that they just slip right off the shell.

(5) Now you should have the whole clam and you want to cut that puppy open. Now, I'm not going to pretend to know all the names of the parts, you can read other websites for that, but here's the secret. Cut off anything that looks yucky and brown, and leave everything that is white and meaty. See my pictures below for what is yucky and what is meaty. There is also a clear straw like piece that you should make sure to remove. Again, I'm not sure what it is, but it doesn't taste good. Please don't ask why I know.




(6) There you go. Now your clam is clean and ready for whatever great chowder or fritter recipe you have downloaded off the internet. Congratulations!!