Steamed Clams with Bacon, Beans & Kale

A weeknight family favorite borrowed from Hog Island Oyster Co.

Happy “Wait, why isn’t my child in school, and what am I supposed to do with them?” week to all who celebrate! Here in the Bay Area, this February break is often called “ski week,” so if anyone out there has a place to stay up in the snow that they want to lend to a food writer and her family, please let me know!

This recipe is coming a little later than I’d anticipated (if you follow me on Notes, you may have seen a promise of “coming this weekend”), but I spent the weekend working on some book promotion fun. If you’re interested, I usually post my book-related news on the Snacking Dinners site and on my Instagram. I’ll have book tour dates out in a couple weeks as well.

This week’s recipe is a perfect example of what I call a “shopping day dinner.” It’s a super quick and easy meal, but it’s something you can only make when you have time to swing by the market at some point during the day. I have a whole repertoire of these kinds of dinners—many focused on having super fresh seafood; my market has a great fish counter—and they’re generally all family favorites.

The first time I had this hearty, flavorful clam dish was at Hog Island Oyster Co’s restaurant in San Francisco’s Ferry Building. I don’t know if they still make this dish, as this was a few years back (when the atmosphere there felt a little more like a high-quality but comfortable fish house and less like a tourist-focused attraction). That version had a mix of sausage, kale, beans, and a few roasted tomatoes, and the flavors all melded together in the broth, perfectly complementing the clams’ briny sweetness. At the end of the meal, I asked for extra bread so that I could sop up all the liquid.

I took that idea home with me and started adding it to my dinner rotation almost immediately, swapping ingredients in and out depending on the weather, how I was feeling, and what I had in my fridge on any given day. My daughter doesn’t love sausage, so I often swap in bacon instead (as I’ve done in this version). Sometimes the kale is replaced with spinach or another leafy green; the tomatoes come and go, depending on how much pasta my little family has demanded that week. I’ve even done a version full of garlic and chopped Meyer lemon peels that I caramelize at the bottom of the pot along with the onions.

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For more quick-and-easy (and delicious!) meals, pre-order a copy of my upcoming book SNACKING DINNERS! As a bonus, you can sign up for added drink-pairing recipes, a free signed bookplate, and a chance to win a fun prize drawing. (Pre-orders are a huge boost for sales rankings and encourage indie bookstores to stock the book.)

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There are a few ingredients that never change in this recipe: It always has either bacon or sausage, cooked right at the start so that the fat helps cook the later ingredients; lots of onions and garlic, cooked until soft and sweet; white beans, because their mild flavor allows them to soak up the bivalves’ brininess; and, of course, the clams themselves. This week I chose little necks, because they looked best, but I also use Manillas—whatever is freshest (and to be honest, cheapest) at the market. The genius of this combination is that the heft of the dish really comes from the beans and the greens, while the combination of meat and clams adds lots of protein. It’s a perfect one-pot meal with all the food groups included; all you need on the side is a good baguette for soaking up the broth.

Steamed Clams with Bacon, Beans & Kale

Serves 4

3–4 pounds clams
Freshly ground pepper
2–3 slices bacon or a couple links of sausage of your choice
1 large yellow onion
3–5 garlic cloves
1 bunch lacinato (“dino”) kale
Extra virgin olive oil (if needed)
2 cups white wine or chicken broth (or a combination of both)
1½ cups (or 1 can) cooked or canned white beans, drained
Baguette, to serve

1. Wash the clams and check to make sure each one is still alive* (if any are slightly open, tap each one firmly on the counter; the live ones will slowly close up). Put the live clams in a bowl, cover them with water and add a touch of black pepper so that they’ll spit out the sand left in their shells.

2. While the clams sit, thinly slice the bacon (or crumble up the sausage), dice the onion, mince the garlic, and de-rib and chop the kale.

3. Put the bacon/sausage in a wide pot and cook it over high heat, stirring frequently, until the meat is crisp and beginning to brown and has released its fat. Add the onion to the pot and cook, stirring frequently, until it has softened and started to turn a bit golden; if the meat hasn’t released much fat, add a bit of olive oil to the onion. Add the garlic and cook just until it no longer smells sharp, about 1 minute, then stir in the kale until it is wilted and slightly softened, about 2 minutes.

4. Pour the wine/broth into the pot and let it come to a boil, then add the bean to the pot and season everything with pepper. (The clams will add plenty of salt on their own.) Drain the clams and nestle them into the pot; I like to put them in hinge-side down, to give them room to open up, and I try not to pile them on top of each other.

5. Cover the pot, turn the heat down just a bit (the liquid should still be bubbling but not boil very hard, so the beans don’t fall apart) and let the clams steam until they’ve all opened; the timing will depend on the size of your clams, but I start checking the pot at about 10 minutes.

6. Divide all the ingredients between four bowls and add some of the broth; don’t scrape the bottom of the pot with the ladle—if the clams had any residual sand, the bottom of the pot will have some grit. Serve with baguette.

*to store live clams, remove them from the bag they came in, put them in a bowl, cover them with a wet cloth, and refrigerate them.

From the Archives

Apparently my early winter Note about having an overloaded Meyer lemon tree has hit a chord with people—it’s suddenly my top-performing note ever with (at current count) almost 500 likes. Who knew? I guess everyone is craving a taste of sunshine. So, I figured it’s a good time to re-up one of my favorite ways of using my sweet-tart bounty: a delicious tart that uses the whole lemons, skin and all. Enjoy!

Photos: Georgia Freedman