“Peel” the Clams Before Cooking to Remove Any Sand and Grain From Them.
Nothing spoils spaghetti and shellfish or boiling shellfish like biting into the sand. Cleaning is important, but you can remove this sand and any grit particles before cooking by “cleaning” them or taking advantage of their bivalve nature and giving them some water to filter.
You will need to plan ahead because the process can take a while and you will likely need several rounds of cleaning. Daniel Gritzer of Serious Eats explains how it works:
It’s easy to clean: just let the clams sit in cold salty water (about the same salty as the sea, which means about a 3% solution, although I always just look at that). Remove the clams every 30 minutes, change the water, and repeat until the bottom of the bowl is empty of sand or grains of sand. This could have been after the first cleaning or after the fourth. It just depends on the shellfish.
Be careful with any shellfish that don’t close when you push them because they might be dead. You should also watch out for any shellfish that won’t open when you cook them, as they might be empty shells filled with dirt or sand. You spend extra time preparing the clams by peeling them, but the process is so simple and the end result is worth it.
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