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Thursday, May 31, 2012
How to Purge Clams
Clams are so good and light in flavor. Unfortunately, they are packed with sand as much as they are light. I made my spaghetti alle vongole (spaghetti with clams) by modifying Chef Pasquale's recipe to fit the Filipino budget. In order to make this simple dish with modified ingredients still have bright flavors, time must be spent in purging the clams. The video below shows how clean and active (and hungry!) my clams were after spending a night undisturbed by curious me.The first step you have to do is to clean the clams. Yes, you will clean them later after purging, but you do need to get out as much dirt as possible from the outside. Do so by rubbing the clams together under running water. Remember, whatever is present in your soaking water will be the same thing your clams will take in. The cleaner your purging water will be, the better for you and your clams. Make sure you choose clams that are closed tightly and discard the ones what are chipped, cracked, or open before you begin purging your clams.
Now prepare a flat yet deep container. I usually use a 12x12x4 non-reactive container (plastic) but since someone used my container for a large amount of salad we won't be able to eat, I had to use my aluminum wok. Not a good practice, but it does the trick.
The amount of water you need will depend on how much clams you have and how wide your container will be. I used 2lbs of clams in the video above, and since I don't measure, I just put in salted water until the clams are covered with up to 2-3 inches of water. But as a general rule, a gallon or 3.75L of water would require about 1/3 cup of salt.
One must use salted water. Remember that clams came from the sea, and using plain tap water will create an imbalance to the tissues of your clams, causing early demise. It's complicated, but if you do want to kill your clams prematurely, using plain water is the way to go. How much salt? Technically, your purging water must taste like the sea. It may mean that you will eventually run out of salt if you will follow my procedure, but believe me. All that effort and salt consumption is well worth it.
I purge my clams about 24-30hours, changing the purging water every 3-4 hours as I go. And yes, that would mean waking up in the middle of the night (either 12 am or 1am) to change the water to make sure that your clams will have enough oxygen throughout the night. I changed the purging water again when I wake up, with the last change of water done 2 hours before I cook the clams.
It may seem a lot but this picture shows how much dirt the clams have in them... and this is already the second change of purging water. Just imagine how much I had with the first one. I had that much dirt up to the 4th replacement, with the last changing water about 90% clean. Your clams will show the greatest amount of activity at night when the lights are off and everything is quiet. You can induce purging during the day by covering your container with a dark cloth.
If the last change of purging water is still dirty, why not go purge the clams for 48 hours then? Because your clams will go hungry. Clams eat plankton, and the reason why they suck and expel water is to filter in plankton from the sea. You can go on and on with cleaning and purging if you prepare your water with plankton. But with P2,000 per plankton container that you will use for just P100 worth of clams that you will consume instantly, I don't think it would be feasible. 30hours is as much your clams will take, and expect some casualties when you wake up. I had about 2-4 clams die on me in every purging process. However, others get creative by adding cornmeal as food for the clams.
So, there you have it. My extensive and tedious technique in purging clams. If you have any other tips and suggestions, feel free to post your comments bellow and share them with us. ;)
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