Geoduck
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 – 11:45 AM
What’s the most disgusting looking thing you’ve ever eaten? I used to have to think about about this, there were several not very pleasant candidates. Not any more…
They say you’re not really a local in the Pacific Northwest if you don’t know what a geoduck (pronounced gooeyduck) is. Geoduck is a really large clam that lives several feet down in the sand below the low tide mark. When The Susan and I got invited to go dig for them last weekend it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. So there we were at low tide, which turned out to be at one in the morning, digging for duck.
This turns out to be hard work. Wet sand is heavy and you have to dig out a lot of it to get the clams out. The trick is to use a trash can with the bottom cut out of it to stop the hole collapsing. It still took a couple of hours to find a few geoduck, dig them out and haul them back to the cabin.
I’m pleased to report geoduck are pretty good eating. Although pretty much anything tastes pretty good fried right? We also made some geoduck clam chowda which was very fine too.
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2 Responses to “Geoduck”
The picture of your “geoduck”(Panopea abrupta) is not a geoduck, its obviously a horse clam (Tresus capax/nuttallii)… closed, more circular, dark shell with a armored siphon inlet/outlet and zero mantle meat…. geoduck never are able to get near closing their shells, their siphons inlet/outlet have no armor and is usually clean of algae, their lighter colored shells are “peanut shaped” and they are located twice as far down as horseclams….
there is no comparison in taste, barely any in texture…
and the horse clam has absolutely no mantle meat, and a small siphon compared to the geoducks massive mantle and large siphon….
Horse clams are OFTEN mistaken as geoduck, and its insanely lazy and ignorant…
it would be like going out for halibut and mistaking a starry flounder for a halibut, eating the starry flounder and then saying halibut is a great tasting fish…lol…..
horse clams are good as crab and fishing bait….. not CLOSE to comparable to a geoduck…
By eeeen on May 12, 2009
eeeen,
Thanks for pointing out my mistake, sounds like it’s one that’s often made. So I guess I’m not the only lazy or ignorant person out there. Not that I would know the difference from a Halibut and a Starry Flounder for that matter either. I was sort of relying on my local friends for that.
For me it was largely the digging experience with good company rather than the eating.
Ade
By Ade Miller on May 18, 2010