Maine · Starter
Steamers with Drawn Butter
- Easy
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with a briny, maritime salinity, richness that coats and comforts, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 2kg soft-shell steamer clams
- 500ml water or light beer
- 115g butter
- 1 lemon, halved
- Black pepper
Equipment
Steamer
The skills inside
Steaming: basket, leaf and lidSalted water & the float testStraining & passing through a sieveSkimming: foam, fat and a clear broth
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · shellfish · molluscs · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rinse the clams well and let them sit in cold salted water 20 min to purge sand; lift them out rather than pouring. 20 min
- Bring the water to a boil in a wide pot, add the clams, cover, and steam 5-8 min until they open. 8 min
- Melt the butter gently and skim the foam to draw it clear.
- Strain the clam broth through a cloth into cups: the sand settles at the bottom.
- Serve the clams with the broth for rinsing and the butter for dipping. Pull off the black neck sheath as you eat.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes
- It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
- The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
- Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
- The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
- Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.
Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.
Steaming: basket, leaf and lid 130 recipes
- Steam was running before the food went in: the water at a rolling boil and vapour coming steadily through the basket, rather than the whole thing warming up together.
- Nothing touches the water at any point: the food sits clear of it throughout, and the level neither drops enough to boil dry nor rises enough to wet it.
- The lid stayed on. Every lift costs the chamber its heat, and the number of lifts should be as close to none as the dish allows.
- Lifted out, the surface is glossy and plump with its colour heightened rather than dulled: greens brighter than they went in, not olive.
- Cooked through with the shape intact: it yields at the centre without having slumped or split, and there is no more than a spoonful of clean condensate beneath it.
Where it goes wrong The lid was loose or dripping and the condensate fell back onto the food, so it arrives waterlogged and pale with its seasoning washed down into the bottom of the dish.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Albariño or Muscadet
- Also Right
- Assyrtiko or Vermentino
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with lemon
The Atlantic’s whites beside the sea’s own liquor: salinity in sympathy, acid keeping everything bright.
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