I love little neck clams. Really love little neck clams. So when I saw Ina Garten make these, I knew I had to play. These are almost identical to hers, except I didn’t have any pine nuts and I use way more stuff. Oh and I used boxed bread crumbs.
I’ll tell you a secret. This was so good that the very next day, we got more clams, and made the whole thing together, putting the clams on top of the linguine. Delicious.
Little Neck Clams with Seasoned Bread Crumbs
Ingredients
- 100 little necks (however many you have – my fish gal was selling 100 for $20!)
- about 2 cups of good bread crumbs (I like Progresso – unseasoned, we’ll be adding tons of flavor)
- 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
- a handful of sun dried tomatoes packed in oil, chopped
- a big handful of fresh basil, chopped
- juice of a lemon
- half a stick of butter, melted
Instructions
- In a dry, heated ban, toast the bread crumbs until slightly browned, just shake the pan or stir every so often so that they don’t burn.
- Remove from heat and transfer to a bowl. Leaving them in the pan could cause them to burn which you really don’t want.
- Chop your garlic, basil, and sun dried tomato and halve the lemon.
- Rinse the clams in a big bowl of cool water – if they’re really dirty you can scrub them. If you’ve collected them yourself, soak them in some salted water to get them to dispel the sand -
- Grill the clams until they open. Combine the breadcrumbs, tomatoes, garlic, basil and lemon juice.
- Put the grilled clams in a big bowl, add the breadcrumbs and gently toss to get the mixture into the clam shells.
- Pick up and eat. These are so good you can’t believe it. But we made so much bread crumb mixture that there was tons left over, so I boiled some linguine, tossed the bread crumbs in and added a little olive oil.