Home › Shellfish › Miniature Clambake
Miniature Clambake
Lay some flat stones in an open fire and keep it going until both fireplace and stones are sizzling hot. Rake fire to one side and lay down a deep bed of fresh seaweed or wet grape leaves, strew on dried sage or bay leaves, and stack clams on top. Cover with wet seaweed or leaves, place the hot stones on top of the leaves and rake the fire back over all. When the clams pop open they are ready. They are perfect if dipped in melted butter as eaten, while the liquid is sipped out of the shell.
And by the way, dried sage or bay leaves burned under broiled fish just before taking off the fire give it a fragrant smoky smack.
A pit bake scaled down to a single fire ring. The method is sound, but two things decide whether it works: the stones must be the right kind, and the seaweed must be wet enough to steam rather than smoulder.
- Choose the stones carefullyUse dry, dense, non-porous rock — granite or similar field stone. Stones taken from a streambed, beach wash or anywhere waterlogged hold moisture that turns to steam inside the rock and can crack or throw fragments in a hot fire. Heat them at the edge of the coals for at least an hour before you need them.
- Seaweed means rockweedThe traditional wrap is rockweed, the brown weed with air bladders that steams as it heats. Rinse off sand but keep it dripping wet. Wet grape leaves, corn husks or even soaked burlap will substitute; anything dry will simply burn.
- Buy or harvest responsiblyClams from a beach are only as safe as the water they came from. Take them only from beds a state or local authority currently lists as open, and never after a closure notice. Bought hard-shell clams are the simpler course.
- Purge before you cookHold live clams an hour or two in cold salted water, then scrub the shells. Grit released into the bake ends up in the shell liquor, which is half the point of eating them this way. Discard any that stay open when tapped.
- TimingSmall hard-shells open in roughly 10 to 15 minutes once the bed is closed and the fire raked back; larger quahogs may take 20 or more. Check the first ones that pop rather than waiting for the whole batch — clams left in the heat after opening turn to rubber quickly.
- QuantityThe original gives no amounts. Reckon about a dozen and a half to two dozen small hard-shell clams per person as a main course, half that as a first course, and a quarter pound of butter for every four eaters.
- Handling the hot stonesMove them with a long-handled shovel or fireplace tongs, not a garden rake, and set them on the leaf cover rather than directly on the shellfish. Their job is to hold heat down into the pile from above.
- The sage-and-bay note at the endThat closing line is a separate trick: a handful of dried leaves dropped on the coals under fish in the last minute of broiling. Keep it brief — leaves left to burn out give an acrid, not fragrant, smoke.