clam diggin

[jeepster]

ive been wanting to go dig some clams over at penn cove (south of whidbey) but no 1.  i havent been in since i was a lil kid, no 2. back in the day we used to let them sit in buckets of water and we kept them alive for a few days and fed them corn meal. we lived right on the water so a fresh supply of cold saltwater was about as hard as a 30 seccond walk.  nothing is worse than having a small spoonfull-sized-amount of sand in your mouth inbetween tasty bites. we used cornmeal because they would injest the cornmeal, expell the sand, and if you fed em enough of it, when you cooked em, thier stoumaches would acctually be good to eat.

how do you guys do it? i no longer live on the water, so i cant change the water all the time. how do you get the sand out of the clams?

 i dont want to dig a bucket of clams to only end up chewing on clam flavored sand....

id love to hear how you guys do it

[jumpin]

Dig Butter clams, clean em live, Fry em in the Half shell

[gotshot]

I do like to let them sit overnight in sea water to clean them out but have not had a problem from where I dig with too much sand. I steam them and dip in butter. If you boil them in water and have one filled with sand it ruins the whole pot.

[lokidog]

You can make salt water by adding 1/3 cup of salt per gallon of water.  Put your water and salt in a cooler and mix it real well.  Drop an aquarium aerator in there or just vigorously stir it every now and then to mix some oxygen into the water.  The colder the water, the less oxygen they'll need.

I tend to do the steamers and then just pup the stomach off before eating.  One of my favorite ways is to steam them til they pop, strip out of the shells, pull off stomachs, then drop back into a fry pan with some butter and garlic to reheat them.   

[STIKNSTRINGBOW]

We always did the cornmeal thing, bring an extra bucket, and rinse the clams real good, take the ones off the top, rinse again, repeat until you get no loose sand in the bucket you bring home. bring the other bucket with extra water (about half full) and after they sit in the cornmeal, put them in the fresh bucket to flush it out also...
We do a couple 5 gallon buckets full of clams at our family reunion every year, no problems with sand at all... 
Although last year my cousin did not rinse the cornmeal out, added a little "substance" to the nectar...

[jeepster]

when i make my clams, i use the butter and steamer clams.

my recipe usually includes a whole bottle of white wine (with a few swigs missing), a head or 2 of garlic, a red onion, a thing of cellery, a stick of butter, and a head of cilantro, steamed till they pop, with a fresh loaf of french bread, various cheeses, a salad and ice cold green wine (vhino verde) and if im feeding a bunch of people, i usually pull some salmon and crab out of the freezer... nothing is more rewarding than cooking up a seafood feast and not having to pay a dime to the store for the seafood... the leftovers make one hell of a chowder or cioppino too

hmm, yeah, i guess ill just take some water jugs with me and fill em up, its not like its gonna acctually get warm out anytime soon,

good idea with the aquarium pump