First things first: This is a quick and relatively easy recipe. Probably the best feature is the fact that it is easily scalable. If you want to just make some for yourself, then use two cans. If you want to make some for yourself and one other, use four cans. If you, like me, find that this recipe is about a half step shy of a mystical experience, then use as many cans as you want. The recipe, below, makes enough for about 8 servings.
A caveat before we get started: This is not actually my recipe, but is Mrs. Butcher’s. The first time she made it for me was when we had just started dating and I was blown away. It’s not a complex recipe, but it’s all in the technique—and it took the better part of 20 years before she finally trusted me to make it on my own.
Here’s what you’ll need:
5 Cans of Chopped (not minced) Clams, opened, but NOT drained. I know it sounds obvious to open the cans, but this simply means to make sure they are open BEFORE you start cooking the garlic. We prefer Snow’s, which I’m pretty sure is a national brand. But, if it’s not available where you are, then just about any brand of chopped clams will do. Do NOT use fresh clams for this recipe. Fresh clams are gritty as hell and do not work well for anything other than drowning in butter.
Roughly 5 Cloves of Garlic (depending on their size), sliced or coarsely chopped. Pro tip: while there are lots of flashy ways to get the skin off fresh garlic, the Real Chef way to do it is simply to lay a chef’s knife flat on each clove and smash it down with the heel of your hand. If you want to screw around with metal mixing bowls or a deep fryer, be my guest, but I don’t have time for that shit.
Two cups of fresh Parsley, chopped. If you think you can get away with using dried parsley for this, then stop reading now and go rethink your life choices.
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Romano Cheese, freshly grated
In a two-quart saucepan, pour in olive oil until it’s about ¼ inch deep and heat at medium to medium-low for a few minutes. It needs to be hot enough to sizzle, but not so hot that it starts to smoke. Once the oil is hot enough, add the garlic and give it a stir to keep it from sticking to the bottom. There is a critical time element which divides this sauce from either being the best thing you will have eaten in years, to being as dark and bitter as my life. You want the garlic to just be golden, but NOT to turn brown AT ALL. Even if the edges start to turn brown, you are much better off starting over.
As soon as the garlic achieves its golden pinnacle, the critical time element has arrived. Immediately pour all of the cans of clams with their broth into the saucepan. If you waited until just now to open the cans, then you have demonstrated your inability to read and follow basic instructions—which means you’re probably a doctor. Add the salt and pepper and the chopped parsley and give it a stir. Parsley is easy to grow and will come back for a second year before you need to plant any again, so it’s a good herb for growing pretty much anywhere.
Now just let it heat up a bit until it just starts to froth a little. Keep an eye on it. Don’t start doom scrolling Twitter or go down the Tik Tok rabbit hole because you’ll miss the point where the sauce starts to overheat and switches from clam sauce to rubber band sauce. Once you see the foam, turn off the heat and take the sauce pan off the eye.
Now, just ladle it over the pasta of your choice and top with freshly grated Romano cheese. Don’t even think of using that garbage Kraft Parmesan shaker.
Serve with a vinaigrette salad.
The moans of pleasure you’re hearing are real—don’t fight it.
Ooh la la. That is what I like, minimal effort for maximum result. And of course you had fresh parsley just hanging around waiting for you! Parsley grows easily for me, but I can’t grow cilantro to save my life. I may have to make this for myself, and cook something else for Keitel.
That’s because cilantro is terrible.
Ah, my fellow cilantro-averse comrade! I have the same affliction. I don’t think it tastes like dish soap (a common description) but it does taste somewhat inedible to me. And I’m the one who gifted the FYCE with a Brussels sprouts recipe.
This is almost as bad as your avocado taek.
Consider it a favor from nature that you are unable to grow cilantro.
You have done the FYCE community a great service regarding garlic. I now realize that many of my contributions involve garlic, but I never really say how to get it to its useful state. You do mash it with the broad edge of a large knife (preferably the same one you’ll be using for something else) to get the meat away from the peel. We’ll agree to disagree about the usefulness of a garlic press in the kitchen but for this you certainly don’t want one. As for the browning garlic, I couldn’t agree more. In just oil, like this, it can turn the garlic into a bitter add-on. It’s why I usually start off with adding butter, because that usually provides more leeway and I’ve never heard the term “high cholesterol count.”
I feel like smashing garlic with a knife was one of the very first cooking tips I ever got, and I’m always very confused when anyone deals with garlic using any other method, or complains about peeling garlic.
I own a garlic press, but I only use it in a few very specific instances where releasing the juice of the garlic is necessary. Other than that, it’s fresh, smashed, and sliced or chopped every time.
I was told by someone who supposedly knows stuff that you crush the garlic with the knife so the oil takes in more flavour within the one to two minute “cooking” time and that the peeling-assistance it provides is merely an added bonus.
I don’t know if that is true but I have always crushed garlic cloves with a knife prior to cooking even the rare times I buy the pre-peeled cloves.
Very nice! Look forward to trying this.
I have two more thoughts:
1. You must have worked in a commercial kitchen at some point. Your vehement defenses of ingredients and technique are enviable. When I started cooking in earnest X number of years ago dinner guests would sometimes hover around me in the kitchen and chime in with, “But don’t you think you should [do something.] That’s how I make it.” “Do you? Well, why don’t you find Life’s Helpmeet and have a drink in the living room with him.”
2. If you serve over linguine you’ll be making one of the meals that defined the 1970s.
Yes, actually, I grew up in the restaurant business. My criminal father was a chef for about 25 years before realizing he could more easily rip people off by selling cars. He came into the business at the time when a number of the old masters were getting ready to retire and wanted someone to pass their secrets to. The man was a terrible father and a rotten businessman, but damn could he cook. Anyway, I started working in restaurants at 16 because that’s all I knew and stayed in that business for about 10 years. I only made the mistake of working for the Old Man once, and it lasted about two months before I’d had all the fun I could stand.
Typically, I serve it either over linguine or rotini (which does a good job of holding the liquid). That pasta in the picture was something that was on sale and I was experiencing a very brief moment of whimsy so decided to buy it.
You are the one who should be writing the memoir!
Hannibal and Ellie tell me so, but I think relatively short vignettes are the way to go. My life can be summed up by that description of trench warfare in WWI: Months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror. A chronological memoir would bore people to death, especially after I get past the age of 25 which was…many moons ago.
You, on the other hand, have led quite the interesting life and I want to hear more.
I think you’ve both led very different but equally memoir worthy lives.
I was either in HS or just out when I made pasta with clam sauce for my family for New Year’s Eve before heading out to party. It was one of my father’s favorites. When I returned the next day, possibly the day after, I found out my dad had developed an allergy to clams and spent the rest of the night at the ER. Oops.
Anyway, I love a good clam sauce but haven’t made it in a long time. It’s one of those things I order out. I’m not sure I’m a patient enough cook anymore to do justice to this recipe.