Cooking with Tinned Mussels and Clams
Fresh mussels and clams ask for work: scrubbing, debearding, purging sand, and a careful eye on which shells open and which stay shut. Tinned ones have had all of that done. They arrive cleaned, cooked and packed in something worth keeping, and they can be on the table in the time it takes to boil water. The cook's real decision is what to do with the liquid in the tin, because that liquid is half the value.
For the background on how each shellfish is packed and how to serve a tin as it is, the tinned shellfish guide covers the ground. This piece is about cooking with them.
Where many tinned mussels come from
Galicia, in northwest Spain, is home to many of the mussels in Spanish tins. Its coast is cut by rías, long drowned river valleys open to the Atlantic, and mussels are farmed there on bateas, floating rafts of wooden frames held up by floats, with ropes of mussels hanging down into the water. The specification for the protected designation of origin Mexillón de Galicia names the species, Mytilus galloprovincialis, and five rías: Ares-Sada, Muros-Noia, Arousa, Pontevedra and Vigo, with Arousa the largest. It credits the rías' rich mussels to their great biological productivity: mussels are filter feeders, straining plankton from that rich water.
Ramón Peña's mussels are raised on those floating rafts in the Galician estuaries, then debearded, fried by hand and packed in escabeche (shop Ramón Peña mussels in escabeche).
Reading the tin: the count and the sauce
Two numbers on many Spanish tins, such as 6/8 or 20/30, are a piece count: how many mussels or clams are packed in that tin. Fewer means bigger. Espinaler, the Barcelona house that dates itself to 1896, notes that its mussels come six to eight to a tin, which makes them larger, firmer and less soaked through with sauce (shop Espinaler mussels in escabeche).
The sauce is the other half. Escabeche, often printed on English labels as pickled sauce, is a blend of oil, vinegar and spices, often tinted orange by those spices. Brine or natural tins of clams and cockles hold the shellfish in salt water and their own juices. Other tins use oil, a tomato sauce, or smoke.
The liquid-use table
| What the tin is packed in | What the liquid is | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Escabeche (mussels) | Oil, vinegar and spice: a finished dressing | Spoon it over toast, potatoes or a salad; do not boil it |
| Brine or natural (clams, cockles, razor clams) | Salty shellfish juice | Use it in place of some of the water or stock in pasta, rice or chowder; taste before salting |
| Oil (cockles, mussels) | Oil that has taken on the shellfish flavor | Start the pan with it |
| Tomato or marinara | A ready sauce | Warm through and toss with pasta |
| Marinated or smoked in oil | Seasoned oil | Keep it cold: salads, toast, a board |
One rule runs through the table. The shellfish are already cooked, so they go in last and get no more than a minute or two of heat. The liquid can work longer.
The uses
Escabeche mussels on toast. The simplest and the most satisfying. Toasted bread, mussels on top, a spoonful of the escabeche over everything. The mussels escabeche on toast recipe gives the method. Ramón Peña suggests crusty bread for dipping, and also French fries, which take the orange oil well.
Pasta with clams from the tin. Drain a tin of clams in brine into a cup and keep the liquid. Warm sliced garlic and a pinch of chile in olive oil, add a splash of white wine and the clam liquid, and simmer for a minute or two. Toss in hot linguine with a little pasta water, add the clams at the very end with plenty of parsley, and serve. Conservas de Cambados shucks and cleans its clams by hand so no grit reaches the tin (shop Conservas de Cambados clams). For a Sardinian version with toasted pasta pearls, tomato and saffron, see fregola with clams.
Rice. Cook rice in a mix of water and the brine from a tin of cockles, with a little garlic and olive oil, then fold the cockles through once the rice is done and rest it covered for a few minutes. Espinaler's cockles come from the Galician rías, cleaned by hand of silt and sand (shop Espinaler cockles).
A quick chowder. Soften a chopped onion in butter, add diced potato, the liquid from two tins of clams and enough water to cover, and simmer until the potato is tender. Pour in milk or cream, warm without boiling, then stir in the clams and some chopped parsley. Clams are an exceptional source of vitamin B12: the National Institutes of Health lists three ounces of cooked clams at 17 micrograms, about seven times the daily value.
Pasta with tomato. Ekone Oyster Co. packs Mediterranean mussels from Totten Inlet, in Washington, in a marinara with capers and suggests tossing them straight into warm linguine (shop Ekone mussels in marinara). It is dinner from one pot and one tin.
Cockles in oil. Fangst packs cockles from Denmark's Limfjord in cold-pressed rapeseed oil, an unusual pack for clams (shop Fangst Limfjord cockles). Use the oil to fry garlic and breadcrumbs, then scatter the crumbs and cockles over pasta or greens.
Salads and boards. Marinated mussels belong cold. Fangst's Limfjord blue mussels are marinated with dill, fennel seeds and apple vinegar in organic rapeseed oil, and the maker suggests sourdough and cultured butter (shop Fangst marinated blue mussels). Over a potato salad they make a meal.
Razor clams and other brine tins
Razor clams, long and narrow, are usually packed in brine and treated like other clams in brine, though their length and tenderness make them a dish to serve whole. The guide to razor clams explains them, and the tinned clams and cockles with white beans recipe is a good first dish for any brine tin.
Once the tin is open
An opened tin is cooked shellfish and behaves like it: into the refrigerator, covered, and eaten within a few days. The guide to how long tinned fish lasts after opening has the rules.
The tinned mussels, clams and shellfish collection gathers these tins in one place. The lesson they share is a pantry lesson more than a recipe: the tin holds two ingredients, not one. Treat the escabeche as a dressing and the clam juice as a stock, give the shellfish a minute at the end, and a tin turns into dinner with very little else.
