What types of clams can you buy

The different sizes have different uses and applications. Littlenecks are commonly served in pastas, like linguine with clams, or raw. Cherrystones are best chopped up, added to chowder or as stuffies. Slightly different from an Italian American-style baked clam, New England stuffies are made with by shucking the clam raw, saving the juice, chopping up the meat, and blending it with lots of bread and other aromatics, baking it until hot, and finishing it under the broiler.

Chowder clams and quahogs are the next two sizes up. Both are good for the same sorts of applications as Cherrystones, but it's a lot of clam and a very big shell. Known as steamers, Ipswich, or pisser clams, soft-shell clams look completely different from their hard shell brethren. A foot is always sticking out of the side and the shell, which never closes, sort of like a tiny version of a Geoduck. In coastal seafood joints up and down the East Coast, soft-shells are traditionally steamed, then drained and served with a cup of that drained broth, and a cup of drawn butter.

To eat, diners peel the dark membrane from the foot, dip and swish the meat in the broth to rinse off any excess sand, and dunk it in the butter. In New England, where deep-fried seafood is highly respected, many clam shacks use a bit of evaporated milk to help the corn flour dredge cling to the meat.

Sort of like a hybrid of both Atlantic hard and soft-shell clams, Manila clams have a hard shell with a tiny siphon that sticks out the side. Native to the Pacific Ocean, this clam is reared in farms up and down the West Coast. How deep they bury varies by variety. Thousands of clam species live in the wild, though not all are edible. Quahogs pronounced: KO-hogs, with regional variations include littlenecks, topnecks, cherrystones, and chowder clams.

These clam varieties range from about 1 to 5 inches in diameter, with littlenecks being the smallest in this list, and chowder clams the largest and oldest at harvest.

Hard shell clams have short siphons the part of the clam that filters sea water for feeding and bury themselves in shallow sand. Quahogs are native to the Eastern seaboard, from the Canadian coast to Florida, and particularly in Rhode Island. Fresh quahogs have tightly-closed shells that range in shades of white, cream, brown, and gray. Their color appears variegated, with darker rings ranging from lighter shades of brown to dark gray and black.

Manila clams are also a hard shell variety, but their shells are thinner than quahogs. Save FB Tweet More. Types of clams - guide to different clam varieties. Credit: Getty Images. Types of Clams: Chart and pictures with types of clams, taste, tips, and pictures.

Credit: Illustrations by Melinda Josie. Related Items Types of clams - Hard Shell clam picture. Credit: Illustration by Melinda Josie.

Types of clams - Soft Shell Steamers clam picture. Types of clams - Cockles. Types of clams - Manila Clams picture.