Best Linguine With Clams Recipe That Anyone Can Tackle

Emily Abrams

When seafood and pasta come together, it’s an Italian recipe for success. You might see this dish featured as “spaghetti alle vongole” when you’re eating your way through Italy or chowing down at your local Italian restaurant. The light sauce has a ton of rich flavor thanks to all of the butter, white wine, lemon and garlic. And if you’re lucky, you’ll have enough sauce leftover for dipping with a whole loaf of crusty Italian bread.

When it comes to marrying the best of the carb world with the best of the sea, we automatically reach for linguine with clams and a big piece of garlic bread. Here are our best recipes for both to make your weekend dinner every bit as indulgent as you want it to be.

Garlic Bread

Ingredients

1 loaf of sesame-crusted Italian bread, sliced in half length-wise
1 tablespoon of fresh parsley, chopped
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter, room temperature
5 cloves of garlic, minced
Extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

In a small bowl, mix the soft butter with the minced garlic and parsley. Spread the mixture on each half of the bread. Drizzle a generous amount of olive oil on each half. Place the bread on a foil-lined baking sheet into the preheated oven and let it bake until it turns golden brown. Wrap the bread in aluminum foil until you’re ready to serve it. You can always turn off the oven and leave it in there to keep it warm until you’re ready to eat.

Linguine With Clams And Mussels

Emily

Ingredients

Extra-virgin olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
3 dozen littleneck clams, scrubbed under cold water (you can ask the fish professionals to do this for you)
2 dozen mussels, cleaned
1 cup of white wine
1 cup of chicken broth (more if you want extra broth for dipping)
1/2 teaspoon of crushed red pepper flake
1 teaspoon of fresh black pepper
1 pound of linguine
3 tablespoons of butter
2 tablespons of fresh parsley, chopped
Parmesan cheese for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Fill a large pot with water and a generous amount of salt and bring it to a boil.

Pour the clams and mussels into a colander in the sink. Rinse them with cold water and make sure they’re all clean and ready to go. You can throw out any shells that were prematurely opened.

Meanwhile, place another large pot on the stove and turn the heat to medium-low. After about a minute, add in the olive oil, butter and shallots. Move the shallots around with a spatula until they start to become translucent. Add in the garlic and red pepper flakes and stir the mixture.

Once the liquid reduces by one-third, add in the white wine. Let the wine reduce by half and add in the chicken broth. Let the broth come to a boil over medium heat. Season the broth with black pepper and any extra salt or butter you think it might need.

Once your pot of water has come to a boil on the other burner, add in all of the linguine and cook it until it’s al dente. You want the pasta to have a little bit of chewiness to it since it’ll cook continue to cook in the steaming hot broth afterward.

It’s time to add those mussels and clams to your broth. Cover the pod and let the shellfish steam open. This should take about 10 minutes. Once all of the shells open, remove them from the broth and keep them warm.

Once the pasta is cooked, drain it (but reserve some of the water for the broth) and toss the pasta into the broth with a quarter of a cup of the pasta water. Mix everything around (on low heat) so the sauce is fully coating the pasta and shellfish. Toss in the parsley and a little more of the black pepper, throw the clams and mussels back in and give it one more toss.

Serve the linguine with the garlic bread for dipping.

A lot of Italians believe that putting grated cheese on shellfish is taboo, but do whatever makes you happy. In our unbiased opinion, Parmesan cheese only adds to the whole buttery, garlicky, white wine theme you have going on.

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