Diving for World Class Butter Clams Off the Coast of Oregon — Deep Dive

I grew up on the coast we lived all over Oregon but I've just been around wild product and my whole life growing up salmon trout ocean fish as well when I started working in restaurants even high-level ones it was kind of disappointed in the quality of certain products a lot of people just don't even know what the potential for these products are [Music] this is the butter clam we're really trying to showcase this ingredient because we think that it's a world-class quality of clam hasn't really caught on at all young as far as food grade goes you are able to dig them in safer areas and stuff but it's a tremendous amount of work for a small yield so any sort of harvest that is gonna have a really fruitful amount it has to be done by diver harvest and the highest population density of these clams exists in Tillamook Bay here until my fav their native high population really delicious but just haven't really been in the market or I've been introduced to the market so we're trying to work with fishermen like Brad to help introduce these to other chefs and popularize I'll probably get a few butter clams but man I just want to show you the ecosystem I don't know if you know much about clams and how they live on the substrate but on the surface you have the cockle clam which would actually move throughout the Bay they hop on their tongues below them you have the butter clams about eight inches down and then about a foot to about two feet down you know before snack letting butter clam is definitely one of the best eating plants in the world especially creating raw so unique to this Bay they're actually found from Alaska to Northern California but these ones specifically are just such a higher quality than any other ones that we've had from other states or other areas because of it they're found when you go down there there's probably 10 generations of giant clams that have bred and died off so a lot of times you see shells people worry about the shelves but actually it's the opposite the shelves are the one thing that's keeping this the mecca for clams on the west coast the number one issue I see with new divers is equalizing as they go down knowing that every inch it's a different pressure change and the first four feet is where most the pressure change happens so learning to equalize you should always feel comfortable the whole way down [Music] if you don't protect your hands or your knees mutable shred threw your stuff in in one day especially on a strong current because you're trying to hold your position and there's so many clams I'm talking you got the shells in the shells you have thousands upon thousands of pounds that all it takes is one one knee or one shell fragment will shred your glutes first time that we ever went down and dives yeah it's definitely really nerve-wracking to deal with different tides pretty murky the currents really strong you're constantly going in and out of these really dangerous ranges for your ears and sinuses because of having to equalize back and forth between the depths sport boats riding right over the top of you while you're diving we wear sixty-five to a hundred pound weight bust and it gets you right down to the bottom the air tank is hooked up to a compressor on the boat did two hoses instead of air tanks constantly getting tangled up so yeah I was terrified the first time to be completely honest as far as what's going through your mind like one step down the ladder at a time and then you kind of like get comfortable and you just try to go as slow as you can going down you have to go down slowly if you just go straight down to the Bobby Blair dress up so once you get your feet on the ocean floor it's definitely a very relieving feeling because it is kind of just like dropping into a really fascinating River the butter clam is the six to ten inches down underneath the sand so to access those or any of the clams you basically brush start brushing away the sand and shells to expose the clam so you want a tide that's outgoing so the current will take the sand away and then it creates visibility for to see what's left underneath once the sand clears you see millions of clams like a number that you couldn't even count just a really good feeling to be able to see firsthand the health of the ecosystem and the massive population of these clams and it really makes you feel good about being able to harvest them and introduce them as a new item in the market it's rare to have an opportunity to be that connected to the process of gathering your food [Music] as far as finding these clams you can't find him anywhere else that was great it's good to take you guys down low to bring a bag up right now [Music] once you once you start eating them you're like how is this not a thing that's that people be like at restaurants here so we just learned essentially by trial and error after deciding that we wanted to work with these the best ways to prepare them we shuck these clams live we don't do anything to them previous or not steamed or blanched or anything so we get right in there first muscle off we just follow the line of the shell so we don't cut into the clam we go right back the other way along the skirt kind of followed the line of the shell once again here free that other abductor muscle so there we have the clam remove the top shell and then the abductors were going to come back on the other side free them from the base just like an oyster you can see those two nice big abductor muscles by far my favorite part of the butter clam it's extremely firm and crunchy has the texture of like a very fresh scallop really clean flavor it's the best part of the clam for eating raw this butter clam is a red meat clam and it has to do with the ecosystem that they're living in and what they're filtering what type of sand and rock and and also what type of microalgae that they're eating that microalgae also adds a lot to the flavor of the clam the next move here is to break down each piece of the clam so abductor muscles will pop right out beautiful and they're huge you're already getting two pieces of meat that are that big and it's a very small portion of the actual clam itself the skirt of the clam is this next part this is what helps seal the shell so we just split that into two different strips so then for this next part we have the mantle this is the stomach of the clam which is not a part that we use for eating raw but this part along the edge is something that we do use so we just basically follow that line where the color differences and remove that last part that we remove from the stomach of the clam is the siphon what the clam uses to filter water in and out one two pulls it in and it processes through the stomach of the clam and all microalgae and small different things that the clam can eat our filter through the stomach and then the Cure baya water is put back out so they're extremely important part of the Bay because they filter everything and we're gonna serve all the different edible parts of this year our abductor our clam skirt our mantle and then lasses the syphon so as you can see this siphon just looks exactly like really tiny gooey duck well I think we wanted to serve them as naturally as possible in their natural form minimalist garnish and in their own shells so it sort of just kind of took place from trying to keep it as original as possible that took its own form this company meant for this clam is a fabrina winter melon from Ayers Creek Farm in gastrin Oregon and it's an Italian varietal of melon that it's not grown in winter but they call it went to melon because it's a storage melon and you use it in winter after it's been sitting on the shelf for several months and so this juice is fermented liquid from the melon so it's just you know added 2% salts to the melon juice and then we let it ferment at room temperature with kelp in it so it's like kimchi basically the white kitchen and this rind is stored in brine it does develop flavor over time nothing too assertive which is more of a textural component we really like liking the flavor of this clam - melon so that's why we serve it with this because it just is a nice accent to the flavor doesn't compete with a just elevates a and balances it as well and more of that olive oil [Music] is extremely dangerous and it's really hard work but it's definitely worth it [Music]

Channel: Eater

Views: 614,564

Keywords: Diving for clams, clams, clam diving, diving, butter clam, oregon coast, oysters, bivalves, Portland oregon, Portland, seafood, jacob harth, erizo, freediving, harvesting clams, harvesting oysters, diver harvest, tilamook bay, tilamook bay oregon, eater, eater.com, food, restaurant, dining, dish, foodie, chef, foodshow

Id: xT9UGsF9SQE

Length: 10min 24sec (624 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 16 2020