Japanese chefs slice it for sushi and sashimi. Swanky New York bistros serve geoduck with rice wine vinegar. Today Puget Sound fishermen sell four million pounds of it each year, or about two million clams' worth. The neck resembles an aardvark's snout, an elephant's trunk or a monstrous prehistoric earthworm emerging from a fist-size shell, among other things.įorty years ago this mollusk was virtually unknown outside the Northwest. Its long, leathery neck can stretch to the length of a baseball bat or recoil to a wrinkled nub. Wearing a neoprene dry suit, he stood in the boat surrounded by the morning's haul: a glistening payload of an absurdly proportioned shellfish defined by a mass of pudgy, lolling flesh.īuried in the muck beneath Puget Sound lives the Pacific Northwest's most profitable marine creature, a mollusk so valuable that gangsters have traded it for narcotics: the geoduck (pronounced "gooey duck"), the world's largest burrowing clam. Parker's eyes, though, were well trained. Sixty feet below, where Parker had spent his morning, the seafloor was flat and sandy-barren, to unschooled eyes, except for the odd flounder or orange sea pen. We were anchored 50 yards offshore from a fir-lined peninsula that juts into Puget Sound. But more adventurous cooks can find recipes for geoduck ceviche, carpaccio and scalloppine with a quick Internet search.Craig Parker popped his head above the surf, peeled off his dive mask and clambered aboard the Ichiban.
"We just keep it simple here," Linda Ewen says. The more tender body meat will get sliced into thin strips and then breaded and fried, like other clam meat. His wife, Linda, grinds up the siphon meat for fritters or patties and mixes it with horse clams for chowder. However, "you don't want to overcook them or they get too tough," says Roy Ewen, who has been a recreational geoduck digger for more than 50 years. It can easily be blanched, stir-fried or cooked up in chowder. There are a variety of ways to cook geoduck.
#Geo duck clams skin
When it's ready, the skin should peel off easily. The stomach, which is dark, oval-shaped, and about the size of an egg, should be removed and discarded.Ī tough skin encases the neck and body, but it can be removed by either quickly boiling the clam meat or running it under hot tap water until the skin begins to bubble. Then, to separate the shell from the body, run the knife along the edge of the shell, being careful to cut through the adductor muscles that keep the shell and body connected. To prepare the geoduck for cooking, start by inserting a paring knife between the shell and the body at the base of the neck. Like other clam species, live geoducks can be stored safely in the refrigerator for several days, tucked into the coldest part (though not the freezer) and wrapped in a damp cloth. Some people prefer to eat geoducks with pale necks, but color doesn't influence taste. Though they may be a rare find in the American supermarket, what if you manage to find someplace that sells live geoduck? Look for clams with siphons that appear fresh, plump and firm. The majority is shipped to Asia where they get served up in Chinese hotpots or as sushi or sashimi in Japan, where they are called mirugai. They can grow up to 14 pounds and a meter long, but most are harvested at about one to two pounds. The geoduck ( Panopea abrupta), called the elephant trunk clam in Chinese, is a large bivalve characterized by a body encased by two shells and a long neck called a siphon. Outside of the Pacific Northwest, where they grow, and Asia, where they've become a delicacy, the place most people are likely to see one may be on television. What is a geoduck? Don't feel bad if you've never heard of the large clam before.
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