Does anyone here do a clambake for a group?

[grasswire]

We are thinking of that for family beach gathering at my cousin's beach house. Would like to do a New England style bake because we are celebrating our Connecticut and Long Island ancestors. I see that Martha Stewart recommends making individual parcels in cheesecloth for steaming and easy serving.

Any hints?

[JayhawkSD]

1. For heaven's sake don't do packets.

The whole idea of a clambake is to let all of the various items cook together so that flavors mingle. Doing Martha Stewart's silly packet thing will be neat and tidy and will utterly defeat the purpose of doing a clambake.

Wikipedia has a pretty good description. The specific items are relatively unimportant, it is the general method which matters, and even that is fairly imprecise.

[Galileo126]

2. I agree with JayHawk (above)

Everything should be cooked together, minding of course the cooking times of each component (what goes in first...last, etc.)

Martha Stewart is still stuck on Emily Post's view of dining etiquette. Clambakes, like crab boils and crawfish boils, should be messy - and fun!!

Ideally, clambakes are done over large areas of coals and hot rocks with seaweed and burlap as covers to keep the steam in. But then again, only folks who live near the coast will have access to large amounts of seaweed.

Naw, just cook everything in large pots, bring the pots to the outdoor picnic table, and start it dishing out to everyone. Make sure to provide things (large bowls, etc) for shells, corn cobs, 10,000 dirty napkins, and other waste.

Most of all - have fun!! Best of luck, grasswire!

[pinto]

3. I grew up with the traditional clambake mentined. Layered seaweed, shellfish, over red hot rocks.

Final layer of seaweed covered with soaked burlap. We used sand to seal the edges of the burlap all around. Usually added corn on the cob to the shellfish.

If you want to do a boil, suggest using the largest pot you can handle and using seawater, not salted tap water. Have a great one!

[grasswire]

4. well, we will be at my cousin's beach house....

....but it's on a bluff about 40 feet above the beach, so I think we will be doing it on the deck in giant pots. We should be able to get seaweed, but actually now clams might be a problem because of the warm weather and the bacteria that brings. Currently the local beaches are closed because of that. And we sure don't want to buy non-local clams. So we may have to shelve the idea for another time unless that improves in the next three weeks.

Thanks everyone for the comments about Martha Stewart's packets. Good advice.