How to Throw a Backyard Clambake
Think: beach-style “backyard bbq” party.
This week’s Recipe from the Archive comes from a glorious weekend we spent in Cape Cod digging a clambake on Island Creek Oyster Farm’s private beach.
A New England-Style Clambake is a traditional way of steaming seafood in a fire pit, typically done on the beach.
A clambake starts out by bottling sea water, digging a hole, starting a fire and gathering large rocks and rockweed (a type of seaweed that looks like a tangle of beaded necklaces and only grows in the North Atlantic ocean).
Scroll down to see how to DIY your own backyard clambake - or order our Clambake box for the 4th of July!
While the wood burned down to a bed of hot coals and the sun started to sink in the horizon, we took in the sights of the bay: razor clams spitting water from their hide-y holes in the wet sand, the tide slowly creeping back in, little sea beans growing along the shore.
Once the coals were ready, we laid rocks down in the pit to heat. On top of the hot rocks we layered a bed of rockweed and nestled in clams, mussels, whole lobsters, baby potatoes, and halved corn cobs on top before covering it with a final layer of seaweed. We covered the pit with ocean-soaked burlap and held it down with more large rocks and waited…
Just as the sun was setting we unveiled the clambake - bright red lobster, their tails curled around perfectly cooked potatoes, the plump flesh of the clams and mussels that steamed open and the sweet aroma of the corn.
