Grilled clams with lemon basil butter

Summertime and the grillin’s easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the shellfish supply is high. (And, no doubt, the ghosts of Ira and George Gershwin are horrified.)

Although a lot of folks stick to cooking shrimp and the occasional lobster on their grills, I like to make my summer, shellfish meals a bit more intriguing with bivalves. Not sure if you’ve met this gang? You’ll surely recognize the members — clams, mussels, oysters and scallops.

Of the aforementioned four, clams, specifically hard-shell clams, are my current favorite. As their name indicates, hard-shell clams possess hard shells. The other variety, soft-shell, has a brittle, thin shell that, because of a long, protruding siphon, doesn’t close completely.

The clams that I grill are East Coast littlenecks. Possessing a grayish shell less than two inches in diameter, these are the smallest hard-shell clams.

Watching clams clean themselves

To clean my clams, I scrub them under running water with a stiff bristled brush. I then place them in a bowl of cold, salted water to soak. Here’s the cool thing about live clams. They will push the salted water, along with any dirt and debris, out of their shells. In other words, add salt and watch the clams do the cleaning for you. That’s exactly what we’re doing in the above photo. Note how silty the water has become in only 20 minutes.

Once the clams have been cleaned and dried, I either place them on foil on a preheated, outdoor grill or line them up on a preheated grill pan. I then close the grill or cover the pan and let the heat perform its magic. As soon as their shells pop open, the clams are done cooking. Any that don’t open within a reasonable time frame — 8 to 10 minutes — should be tossed out.

Clams grilled, I could splash a dash of hot sauce, squeeze of lemon juice or a dollop of barbecue or cocktail sauce on them. Easy!