A Beginner’s Guide to Live Clams Clams are a popular shellfish to add to coastal meals, but if you aren’t lucky enough to live near the Atlantic Ocean on the East coast or the Pacific on the West Coast, you may not know much about clams. Live clams are great for more than just clam chowder and steamers!
Our main attraction here at Taylor Shellfish Farms may be oysters, but we still like to show the live clams a bit of love. Here’s everything we wished people knew about live clams:
Clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters are not the same. If you are new to shopping at a fish market, you may be confused as to why the fishmongers are selling hundreds of different types of shelled creatures, some of which are wildly expensive. They are all shellfish that live in salt water, so what’s the difference? Live clams, scallops, live mussels, cockles, and oysters do look similar—we’ll chalk it up to the shells—and have similar roles in the ecosystem. They are all bivalves, mollusks, and filter feeders that spend their lives sitting and swimming (yes, they swim!) around the water. Additionally, there are many different types of each shellfish species, which dictates where they are raised and how they taste. Clams are one of the most unique types of shellfish in terms of variation. All of the mentioned bivalves can be found across the world’s oceans, but some types of live clams can be found in freshwater, which tastes very different from their briny counterparts. Live clams generally have smooth, shiny shells can live in both