White clam sauce recipe for Spaghetti Vongole
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The majority of pasta dishes use either a tomato-based or an olive oil-based sauce. A few others might use a cheese-based sauce like ricotta cheese.
This white clam sauce recipe might be considered easy to prepare. The slightly troublesome part is cleaning the clams (see notes below) to remove salt and sand.
Even then it is simply a matter of soaking in fresh water and scrubbing. And clams are generally quite clean anyway, so this is not a big issue.
As with most "easy" recipes, however, mastery is the tricky part. In this case, you need to cook the clams just right. Over-cooking will render them rubbery and tasteless.
Traditionally, white clam sauce is served with spaghetti or with linguine / linguini. (Linguini is said to be a "misspelling" of linguine but both spellings have become generally accepted, with linguini being more widely used.)
White clam sauce recipe for pasta vongole
- 1kg fresh clams, cleaned and scrubbed / or 400g ready-prepared clams
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- pinch of sea salt
- 1 medium onion
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
- 1/2 cm slice (about 2 tbsp) of unsalted butter
- 300g spaghetti or linguini, cooked according to instructions on the packet
For serving and garnish:
- flat leaf parsley, chopped
- chilli flakes
- extra-virgin olive oil
- grated parmesan cheese
Method:
- Clean the clams by soaking them in fresh water for 20 minutes. During this time, the clams will expel their salt as well as sand. Lift up the clams --= do not pour them out as you would then pour the sand with it - and place in another container. Using a brush, scrub to clean them further.
- Heat olive oil in a large heavy pot. Add onions and a pinch of sea salt. Saute until golden, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until garlic is golden, about another 2 minutes.
- Add wine and dried oregano and let it boil, uncovered, for about another 3 minutes.
- Add clams to the white clam sauce recipe. Cover and cook over medium heat, shaking now and then, until most clams are open. This may take as quickly as one minute, depending on the strength of your fire. Do not over-cook the clams. Look out for clams that have not opened and discard those.
- Remove from heat and stir in the butter until melted.
- Add pasta to the white clam sauce recipe. Toss with chopped parsley. Serve sprinkled with chilli flakes and grated parmiggiano reggiano / parmesan cheese.
Notes about buying clams
Clams are sometimes sold ready-shelled and ready-cooked, either frozen, chilled or in cans, soaked in brine. Unless you know of a good brand, try to avoid these are ready-prepared clams tend to be tasteless and rubbery. They won't make a very white clam sauce recipe.
When buying fresh clams, avoid those that are permanently open. Some may be open but will shut tightly once "disturbed". Those that remain open - even when you prod them - are already dead, smelly and should not be eaten. Also, avoid clams with broken shells.
There are many -- apparently over 2,000 -- different types of clams. The types used in pasta dishes are generally small, with smooth shells that are about 2cm to 4cm across. Choose bigger clams if possible, as the flesh shrinks when cooked and small clams will become very small!
Some chefs claim that small clams taste better but to me, it is a bit meaningless when the clams are so tiny that I hardly get a taste of them.
Clams vs cockles
Clams come from sandy beaches and have white flesh. Even among these, some clams are rounder and have thicker shells, while others are more oval in shape and have thinner shells. They generally taste similar.
I have seen one white clam sauce recipe that talked about cockles. Perhaps the words clams and cockles mean the same thing in some cultures. In Asia, however, cockles refer to a shellfish with ridged (as opposed to smooth) shells, lives usually in black mud, and have red, "bloody" flesh.
This is a totally different shellfish, which the Chinese in Southeast Asia use in a curry noodle dish called laksa, or add to fried rice noodles. Do not use it for your white clam sauce recipe. The taste will be very different -- and your pasta dish will no loner be white!
This said, however, you may vary this recipe using mussels, scallops or other shellfish.
Click here for a tomato-based instead of white clam sauce recipe.
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