Make ahead Clams Casino question

lilbopeep

🌹🐰 Still trying to get it right.
Site Supporter
This is the recipe I will be making (maybe with a few tweaks) >>> Clams Casino Has Every Reason to Be a Great Dish. Now It Is. | Serious Eats

It says:

Cooking the clams first allows us to collect all their juices, then reduce them down with shallots, garlic, more bacon, and white wine. The eventual result: bacon-clam compound butter. (this sounds wonderful as an addition to white clam sauce)

Pre-cooking the clams, then packing them back into their shells with the compound butter, means that this recipe, unlike most others, can be made well ahead of time and finished in the oven right before serving.

My question is can I prep them (up to point of putting clams back into shells) the weekend before Christmas Eve and freeze them. Then on Christmas eve pop them into oven frozen and cook till heated through and browned? It doesn't state how long "well ahead of time" is. It does say I can refrigerate overnight. But no freezer time frame.

Basically I want to avoid the craziness buying seafood to close to Christmas eve (those woman get CRAZY rude).
TIA
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
I personally would not put much stock in freezing a clam - cooked or raw....

"sez who?" indeed - it shouldn't be too expensive an experiment - I presume steaming the clam; saving the shells - oh, good washing required,,,, they could make an odor....
then freeze - fast as possible on wax paper, single layer
experiment two: thaw fast/thaw slow

like, they freeze the stuff in the convenience food frozen section - I presume they are working with blast chillers (ie -40'F type stuff) so it's only a question if you can maintain the texture.

I'd go with the overnight in the fridge meself - once frozen they should be good for months and months if wrapped to protect from freezer burn.
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
interesting technique - it seems the freezing is more a how-to-open thing than prep-ahead - but what works, works.

freezing in the shell is apparently a known technique:
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/clams.html

slicing the in half is a neat trick - that would certainly open the clam and let a lot more "juice loose" aka more clammy flavor. slicing a "fresh" clam in half sounds like an interesting exercise in chasing slippery things around the counter!

btw, if it's just a buy ahead of time issue, you can buy and hold clams for multiple days - keep in a well ventilated container in the fridge....
 
Top