Recipes: Drunken Clams

It has been a while since the last recipe - No-Bake Oreo Cheesecake being posted here. This time around we will share on a dish that we recently made - Drunken Clams! Soaking with the beer, these succulent clams are bursting with natural sweetness of the shellfish. Best of all, just follow some simple steps and you can do it yourself at home too! 

Drunken Clams Recipe!

As you may know, yours truly is also #YourFinanceDoctor, so frugality is my middle name. We only made these when there's promotion where they were being sold cheaply. The only thing that is expensive is the ever-rising-price of garlic! A kilogram of garlic can costs up to RM18 in Bayan Baru Market and RM14 in Giant (smaller in size), thanks to their wide range of benefits as a superfood. 

Ingredients for Drunken Clams

Here's the ingredients I used:

Serving for 5

2 kg of Clams (Manila clams, thin shell compare to hard-shell clam like Kappa)

2 tins of 320ml Lager Beer (Tiger Original)

4 big head of Garlic

2 big red onion

1/2 slab of butter

1 French Loaf

1/2 of lemon

1 small bunch of fresh parsley

Easy to Follow Procedures:

As usual, after buying the clams from the market, you should clean, rinse and soak them in salt water for few hours for them to purge sand and grit. Lightly tap on the clams, if they hold their shells tightly back together then they are still fresh and alive, otherwise, throw them away. I got it from the trusted fishmonger in Bayan Baru, so out of 2kg that I bought, only 2 were unusable (1 dead 1 full of mud). 

Next, coarsely chop all the garlic and roughly slice the red onion. If you do not fancy red onion and garlic, then finely chop them. Then, heat olive oil and butter together in a large pot, add garlic and onion, sauté until they are all soft. Add 2 tins of beer and bring to a simmer. Aroma of the garlic butter and the alcohol from beer will spike your appetite! 

Add in the clams, cover with the lid and let it simmer until all shells open, which is about 5 minutes. Once they are all opened, remove the pot from heat and stir them around using tongs. Make sure you don't overcook them, as you want the sweet juice from the clams. 

That's all! It's done and serve it right away with French loaf. Personally, I like getting my hands dirty. Dip the bread with the clam beer soup while slurping in the clam meat one after another. Speaking of which, the 2kg serving is huge as in each of the 5 person gets a plate of clams like this! That's how I eat as a seafood lover! 

How to make it better?

One thing to improve is the soup. The soup was too watery and taste a little bitter. Perhaps I should let the beer simmer for a longer time to take away the bitterness from the alcohol before adding in the clams. Or maybe just use a tin of beer will do as thicker soup would make the bread taste better! 

That's all very easy right! Go try it yourself and let me know your experience too!
Happy cooking! ;)