Steamers – For My Wife
Last weekend I stopped in the fish store to buy a piece of fish for dinner. Sitting there on ice was a pile of live soft-shell clams with their siphons sticking out from between their paired shells. I know my wife Marci loves steamers, and I figured an appetizer is always good while I’m cooking the main meal. I bought a pound.
When I served them hot and steaming with bowls of their cooking broth and melted butter on the side, my wife was ecstatic. She didn’t care about the rest of the meal, just the steamers. And while we were eating them, as they always do, they brought up memories of her youth in Massachusetts, stopping on the way home from the beach at a clam shack and getting fried clams and French fries.
They also brought up memories of her father Steve, who passed about a year ago. Marci and her father shared a passion for steamers. Whenever they saw steamers on a restaurant menu, they ordered them. They would sit side-by-side opening the clams and taking them out of the shell. They removed the membrane from the siphon, swishing them around in their cooking broth to remove any remaining sediment, and finally dipping them in melted butter. They would pop them in their mouth, Steve “ho, ho, ho-ing” with a big smile on his face and Marci declaring how good they were. Same thing every time they ate them, both of them at their happiest.
In fact, they made Marci so happy last weekend, that when we were discussing tonight’s dinner, she asked if we were having steamers again. Guess what…we are, but this time I bought more than a pound.
Steamers
Steamers are soft-shell clams, a different species from the hard-shell clams (quahogs, cherrystones, littlenecks) with which most people are familiar. Not that you can’t steam hard shell clams. And not that they aren’t good. It’s just that they’re not steamers.
We eat steamers rarely because they’re not always available at the fish monger’s. But when they are available, I make sure to buy a hefty bag, because I have to keep my wife well-fed and happy. Steamers are best served with beer, a lot of napkins, and a smile.
serves 2, about 15 minutes, plus 2 hours soaking time, if you have it
2 lbs. live soft shell clams
¼ cup salt (or about a half-gallon of seawater)
4 Tbsp. melted butter
- Rinse the clams under cold water to remove any mud, dirt, or sand.
- Dissolve salt in a half-gallon of cold water in a large bowl or pot, or use seawater if accessible. Add the clams, allowing them to sit for a couple of hours if you have time. This will help them purge the sediment inside of them, because after all, they are clams and live buried in sand.
- Put about an inch of water in a large, heavy pot so it is just below the level of a steaming rack set in the bottom of the pot. Put the clams on the steaming rack. Close the lid, bring the water to a boil, and cook for about five to ten minutes until the shells open up. Discard any clams whose shells have not opened – they’re dead, and you don’t want to eat them.
- Remove the clams to a large bowl. Pour some of the broth at the bottom of the pot into small bowls, trying to leave any sediment behind, in the pot. Put melted butter in a couple of small bowls.
To eat, remove a clam from its shell and slide the membrane off the siphon. Discard the membrane. Swish the clam around in the broth to remove any remaining sediment, dunk in melted butter. Eat. Enjoy.
Hey Max, guess who else can eat a pound of steamers each? Sof and Eli have to have them as appetizers whenever we go eat seafood. And of course me, too! So next time we go visit…😋
Of course they do! Those kids are the best eaters.