Spicy Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli and Soy Sauce (Chinese Style Steamed Clam Recipe)

Spicy Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli and Soy Sauce Recipe

Steamed clams with garlic, ginger, chilli and soy sauce recipe  is a very simple and easy classic chinese recipe. Steaming clams is a classic Cantonese preparation for live clams to preserved it’s natural flesh sweetness. Eversince my asian licking didn’t much appreciate bland and mild taste, then i decide to steaming my clams with spicy seasoning. I’m using garlic, ginger, and chilli with a splash of lime juice, light soy sauce and sesame oil for slighly drench the clams meat.

Recipe Chinese Style Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli and Soy Sauce

Spicy steamed clams with lots of chillies a quicky and too easy recipe that can be prepared a few minutes before the dinner, but i guess this must be a foolproof recipe. My mom use to made the seasoning separately and then place it in the clams and then steaming it just before serving it. The clams must be pre-steamed or preboiled  to pop out the shell and allowed us to season the meat, but i recommend to steam it to prevent the natural juices and flavours dissolved if it’s boiled first.

Cantonese Style Spicy Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli and Soy Sauce

Perfecly cooked steamed sea scallop texture is superb, a combination of  bounchy, slightly rubberry but easy to chew. The natural juice is come out and it’s taste superior. Make sure you use the live clams for steaming, the frozen or dead clams will be ruined the whole dish, trust me for that.Live clams should be plump, smell fresh, and feel heavy for their size, avoid those with strange odor, escecially with ammonia odor. The clam juice should be clear with no shell fragments.

Kerang Madu, Giant Clams

I’m using kerang madu, a rather large local clams with good meat and shell ratio. Kerang madu or literrary means honey clams in english because it had a sweet squid-like flesh taste. Kerang madu can reach up  500 grams and i’m using about 300 grams weighed clams. Kerang madu usually tagged about 1-2 US$ (10.000-20.000 IDR) for each of it on the seafood restaurant, but since i purchased it directly from the  fisherman in Muara Angke fishmarket, North Jakarta, it only cost me about 50 cents (IDR 5000) for each of it. If you have no cloth bags, store the clams in a bowl covered with a wet cloth in the bottom of the refrigerator, not on ice. Never store them in sealed plastic or submerged in water because they will die from lack of oxygen. Inspect the shell. If the shells of the clams or mussels are slightly open, tap them lightly. They should slowly close. If they do not close when tapped, they may not be alive and should be avoided. Never purchasing clams and mussels that have already been unshelled, even this is sometimes easier, the clams or mussels may not be very fresh.

I usually served steamed shellfish or clams  with rice vermicelly or beehoon, just like my Steamed Sea Scallop with Black Bean Sauce. Beehon or bihun (Bahasa) is a small round and translucent noodle made of rice. The beehon is used within the steamed scallop or clams recipe to absorb the shellfish dripping while steaming process to infused the natural juice into it. Unfortunately i run out the beehoon and i’m too lazy to move round to purchased it for this recipe.

Recipe Spicy Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli and Soy Sauce (Chinese Style Steamed Clam Recipe):

Recipe Spicy Steamed Clams with Garlic, Ginger, Chilli  and Soy Sauce (Chinese Style Steamed Clam Recipe):

Ingredient :

• 1 kg clams
• 3 cm ginger, finely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 chilli pepper (or bird eye chilli pepper), finely chopped
• 1 shallots, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp kaffir lime juice
• 2 tbs of premium light soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp of sesame oil
• 1/3 cup of chinese cooking wine
• shaved spring onion for garnish
• 1 tbsp oil for stir frying

Instruction :

• Brush and clean the clams throughly under running water, pat dry
• Preheat the steamer, set aside
• Heat up 1 tbsp oil in the wok pan, saute the shallots, garlic and ginger util slighly browned and fragrance
• Mix the sauteed mixture with lime juice, soy sauce, sesame oil and rice wine in a glass bowl, set aside
  
• Put the clams in a heatproof pyrex bowl,stem it in high flame for about 30 seconds until the clams shell opened
  
• Put the opened clams out,  then continue to steam it untill all the clams shells opened, discard the clams that won’t opened until steamed for more than 2 minutes
• Discard the juice that running out from the clams, put the seasoning mixture above the clams meat

• Put it back in the steamer, steam for another about 3-5 minutes, depend on the size of your clams. Do Not Overcooked It!
• Garnish with shaved spring onion and serve immediately
  

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