Easy 20 Minute Linguine and Clams Recipe

This classic Linguine and Clams recipe is light, flavorful, and simple to make. Fresh garlic, butter, olive oil, capers, white wine, and tender clams come together beautifully with perfectly cooked linguine for a comforting and elegant meal. Ready in less than 30 minutes, it’s perfect for weeknights or special occasions.

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Hey everybody. So today I am so excited to share with you one of my absolutely favorite dishes. I would have to say this is in the top three of my personal favorite dishes. I make this all the time. When I go to restaurants, I order it all the time. So today I’m going to show you how to make an elegant linguini with clam sauce. Now if you don’t like clams, you can also do this recipe with shrimp. You can do it with muscles. You can do it with clams. Muscles and shrimp. Sometimes I’ll do that when I’m having a dinner party and I really want it to be special. But you’re going to find this is going to be so easy and so elegant and so delicious. So some of the things that we’re going to need, of course, we’re going to need clams. Um, so I always like to use fresh clams. There are a lot of people who use canned clams. That’s perfectly fine. I don’t think it tastes exactly the same. Plus, I like the beauty of the open clams on top of the linguini and picking out the clams. I think that’s just really, really nice. Um, the other thing is that I always buy the clams either the same day that I’m going to make my linguini with clam sauce or the day before. Now, always buy them fresh. If you go the day before, make sure that when you bring them home, you get a bowl and you fill the bowl with ice, put the clams on top, and then put more ice on top and put it in the refrigerator. Don’t freeze. Um, in a minute I’m going to show you how we’re going to clean these clams, but let’s just talk about some of the other ingredients that we’re going to need to to make this. We’re going to need three sticks of butter. Now, I know that sounds like a lot. This is not local, but it is going to be so yummy. And with everything else that we’re adding in, you’re going to see that the three sticks of butter really isn’t isn’t a whole lot of butter. Um, we’re also going to run tons and tons of garlic. Now, because this is a garlicky garicky garlicky plate, um I could sit here and I can peel 20 30 cloves of garlic cuz that’s what you’re going to need. But no, I’m going to use the chopped garlic in a bowl. Hate me later. Send me hate notes, but it’s going to be just as fabulous. We’re also going to use um lemon, uh fresh lemon. We’re also going to use I chopped up fresh parsley. We’re going to use two bottles of clam juice. Um I like Sento clam juice. You can use there’s several other manufacturers who make clam juice, but this is my favorite. One of the other stars of this is capers. I love capers. I’ll put capers on anything. I would actually eat capers out of the jar if I didn’t look silly, but going to use capers. Now, I buy the um uh nonparel capers, which means they’re tinier. If you like the other capers that are bigger, that’s perfectly fine, too. We’re going to drain these, but this is going to be like capers are like a burst of salt within your um your dish no matter what you’re making. And this is just going to add such a zest and wonderfulness to the clams. The other thing we’re going to do is we’re going to use white wine. We want to make sure that we do not in this case use a sweet white wine. Even though I like to drink sweet white wine like mosscato and whatnot, that’s not what you need for cooking. This is a uh pog grigio. Um, I think this was $9 at Wegman’s. And that’s what we’re going to use for this. And obviously, we’re going to use linguini. Now, you can also use um angel hair pasta. You can use spaghetti, but I like linguini cuz it’s a little bit thicker. And this is kind of like, you know, you need a little thicker pasta to hold up with the clams. And then, you know, a couple of other things we’re going to use. We’re going to use some crushed red pepper. And we’re going to use just a little teeny bit of garlic salt. Um, the reason we’re only going to use a tiny bit because the capers are so salty. So, these are all the things that you need. You can see it’s just like five or six or seven ingredients and this is going to make a fabulous dish. So, I want to take a couple of minutes and just give you some suggestions on how to clean these clams. Okay, so let’s take a minute and talk about how we’re going to clean these clams. Really easy, but it’s really an important part of your linguini with clam sauce. You don’t want sandy clams. You don’t want bad clams. And so I’m going to show you how to pick out bad clams. But what we’re going to do is So this is how it came. It came in a bag. And the clams came in this um like netted bag. I’m just going to take a scissors and open up the bag and I’m going to stick them in this bowl. Now I bought little neck clams, which means they’re little. And I’m going to show you how little and tiny they are. The reason this is my preference is because they’re little and they’re sweet. Now, there are all types of clams. If you like bigger clams, like the clam sometimes that you use for stuffing clams or, you know, you just have a favorite, you like a big more chunkier piece of clam um in your linguini, then go ahead. But again, the little necks are always my preference. So, I’ve just put them in a bowl, and all I’m going to do now is run cold water on them, cuz if there’s any sand or anything around them, I just want them to kind of soak up for a second. So, as you can see, I’ve kind of filled up with the bowl with water, and I’m just going to kind of mix the clams around cuz I’m trying just trying to get if there’s any loose sand within them, cuz you don’t want sand in your linguini. Now, the other thing that I do is I take my little kitchen brush and I scrub each clamp again just to make sure there’s no barnacles, there’s no sand, there’s anything. I rinse it off and I just put it in my strainer. Now, these all look like pretty amazing clams. I’m going to try to find one that’s not a good clam so that I can show you. Now, listen. When you get your clams home, one, you don’t want to have any clams that are cracked or or that are not tight. Meaning, if your clam is open partially, throw it away. Do not eat it. So, those are the two things that you’re going to be looking for as you’re scrubbing. You know, this is such a nice dish that most people think they’re almost intimidated by it. You know, one, how do I deal with clams? to, you know, h how do I even, you know, start this or whatnot? But this is really, when I show you how simple this dish is, it’s going to really be one of your go-tos. And I have to say, probably seven out of 10 times when I’m having a dinner party, like a smaller dinner party, this is my go-to. And if I don’t do it with clams, like I said before, I may do it with shrimp or I may do it with shrimp and clams. Now, again, all of these clams look really good. I’m going to try to find one that’s not so hot or that has a crack in it so that you can see what that may look like. And I’m really surprised. This is a really nice bag of clams. Thank you, WGNs, for your nice clams. Except you’re not giving me an opportunity to show my people here what a bad clam looks like. Oh, we got one. Okay, so I don’t know if you can see this, but there is a hole in this clamp. I am not going to use this in my in my um in my plate in my dish because this means that other things have gotten into this clam. So, I am just going to put it over here and I’m going to discard it. So, again, all that you’re looking for is any clams that are either cracked or partially opened, you are not going to use them. So, let me finish washing these clams and then we’ll go to the stove and then we’ll show you how quick this is going to be. All right, so here we go. First of all, while we’re making um the sauce, I’ve got a pot of water boiling for the linguini. Remember, we are not going to salt this until it’s vigorously boiling. It’s vigorously boiling now, but I’m not going to add the salt. Remember why we don’t put water and then salt and bring it to a boil. It’ll ruin your pans. The other thing, just a reminder, we always, always, always salt our pasta. This is the only chance you’re going to get to salt your pasta. If you don’t salt your pasta, the entire dish is going to uh taste flat. So, let me take off this lid and turn this on. Okay, so we’re going to start with the butter. And again, we have three sticks of butter. And we’re going to put this in the pan. And then I’m also going to add a little bit of olive oil. Not too much, but just a little bit. We’re going to add a little bit, just a teeny tiny bit. Remember, only a teeny tiny bit of garlic salt because the capers are going to be very salty. And then, this is important. Now, I don’t like hot spicy food, but for this, you need a little bit of crushed red pepper. Now, if you like hot spicy food, put a lot of this. I don’t put a whole lot because neither my husband or I like spicy food, but this just adds really a nice depth. And I like using the crushed red pepper in this dish rather than black pepper. Um it just adds a different dimension to the to the um dish overall. So, I’m just going to let this melt a little bit. To me, there’s nothing better than olive oil, butter, crushed red pepper, and my favorite, garlic. Now look, if you’ve been watching my videos, besides my husband, this is my love affair with garlic. Um, I never think there’s enough garlic in a dish. There’s only one or two dishes in all of my repertoire that I don’t use garlic that I’ll show you someday. But this is a dish where the main main flavor is garlic. Now, one thing I failed to tell you is that you can make this sauce either red or white. Now, we’re making it white, which means it’s everything in it is white. We’re making um butter. We’ve got garlic. We’re not adding any tomatoes or tomato sauce to make it red. Now, you absolutely can do that at the end after we make everything before we put the clams in. You can add either in um some crushed red tomatoes. You can add in some chopped canned tomatoes. You can even add just a little teeny bit of um tomato paste if you want. I always prefer this to be white. Um, so that’s how we’re making it. So the butter is almost all dissolved and melted. And so here we come. Now look, if you don’t like garlic, this is not your dish. I’m putting in two, maybe three heaping forkfuls of garlic. Remember, this is the main flavor of this dish, the garlic, the butter. Then we’re going to add lemon juice. We’re going to add white wine. This is just heaven. So, we’re going to let the garlic just simmer just for like a minute or two. I can’t I wish I wish you could smell this. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. There is nothing, and I mean nothing better than the smell of butter, olive oil, and garlic, and crushed red pepper. Just I could take a loaf of Italian bread and start dunking this right now, but then we wouldn’t have any sauce for our linguini. So, I’m going to try to uh have great discipline here and not touch this. All right. So, now we’ve got the garlic going for a couple of minutes and we’re going to add the capers. Now, I usually take like the back of the fork because I don’t want the juice from the caper. But see, I’m putting in like maybe three or four or five back of the fork fulls of capers. So, maybe I used like a third of the jar of capers. And you know what? I’m going to put a little more. Now, one thing you’re going to notice with my cooking, very rarely do I measure. I’m sorry. I know that’s hard. It’s one of the complaints that I get. Um, that’s probably reason why I don’t bake so much cuz I hate to use measuring stuff. I like to just go with like my gut. So, you know, when I say like use, you know, half of a jar of capers, that’s my preference. You can start with a, you know, a quarter and then, you know, see if you like it. Um, but trust me, you’re never going to go wrong with this combination with capers in it. All right, so now we’ve got the capers, we’ve got the garlic, and now we’re going to add um a half of lemon. Now, I’m being really fancy today and using this. I usually don’t. I usually kind of squeeze it through my hand so that there’s no um seeds that come through. Okay, so half a half a lemon. Now, when you make this for the first time, you may decide that, you know, you know what? I wish you had a little more lemony taste. The next time you make it, put a whole lemon in. This is just my preference. Okay. Oh, if you could just smell this. If you could just smell this. All right. So, now I am going to add those two jars of clam juice. Again, I use Sento. You can use any one that you want. Now, what this is going to do, this is going to cool this down, and we’re going to need to bring it up again, um, the heat up again because before we add in, um, the wine and the clams, we want this going pretty hot because that’s what’s going to cook the clams and open them up. Now look, we’ve been cooking for like two or three minutes and 80% 90% of the ingredients are already in here. So I want to bring this up a little hotter. Now, a nice accompaniment that I usually make with this when I have a dinner party is I’ll make some garlic bread. Um or I’ll just make plain Italian bread and like with a dipping sauce or whatnot. It’s a lot of garlic, you And I always make sure that when people are coming over, I ask them, you know, do you like seafood? Do you like garlic? Because that’s going to determine. I never just make something without knowing what people’s preference are. You know, today in this in this age with, you know, people are gluten-free. There’s a lot of vegetarians. I never take for granted or just assume, well, I’m making this and if you don’t like it, then, you know, you’re not going to have anything to eat. That’s not even in my brain. If you’re new to my house and I really don’t know what your preferences are, I really don’t know what you like. I’m asking because when I you come to my house, there’s nothing more loving that I can do for you than cook for you. And I want to cook something that you want to eat. So, if you’re not a seafood person, I’m not making this. If you’re not a garlic person, I’m not making this. And you know, that’s how I approach entertaining. To me, it’s like I just want everyone to come have a great time, have something to eat. And that’s why sometimes if I have like six people coming and one person’s a vegetarian, that means I’m going to make special dishes just for them. I may make this if everyone else likes seafood and whatnot, but I may not, you know, but I’m going to make additional dishes for the vegetarian person so that they have options, too. All right. So, I’m just going to let this go for another minute or so and then we’ll go on. Okay. So, I’m putting my hand here to see how hot it is. And it’s getting there. So, I’m raising it just a little bit. So now I’m going to add like two swish arounds of white wine. And that’s it. Now remember when I said before that, you know, the three sticks of butter really seemed like it was a lot, but look in the scheme of things. I mean, this is what’s really the foundation of our sauce. So, the last thing that I’m going to put in before the clams is I’m going to put in some parsley. Now, I’m going to leave some parsley for later cuz I want to top the dish with parsley to make it look pretty. Now, look how fast this is all going, folks. Okay, now we’re going to take the clams. We’re going to put the clams in. Okay, the clams are in. Now, what we’re going to do is we’re just going to cover these. You are going to know that your clam sauce is done when the clams open. So, while we’re waiting for that, we’re going to work on the pasta and then we’ll bring it all together. Okay, so the clams are cooking. We’re waiting for them to all open up. The water is boiling vigorously for the pasta again. This is when we’re going to salt it. And now we’re going to add the linguini when it comes back up to a boil. Now I am using, like I said, linguini. You can use angel hair pasta. You can use spaghetti. Um, you can use anything that you want. Now the uh recommended time for this is 10 to 11 minutes for al al dente. We always want aldante pasta. We never want mushy pasta. So I am actually going to check this because it says 10 to 11 minutes. I’m going to check it at 9 minutes um to make sure that it’s not overcooked. So as soon as this gets up to a boil, I’m going to add the pasta. We’re going to go 9 minutes and then we’re going to bring this whole dish together. Okay. So, we have less than a minute left with the pasta and I’m going to show you how to put this whole thing together so that it looks beautiful. So, the other thing I just want to do, these clams are now cooked. If you can see, every single clam has opened. That’s when you know your sauce is done. You don’t want to overcook your clams because they will get tough. So, as soon as they open, your sauce is done. If you have a clam in here that didn’t open, it’s bad. And take it out. All right, let’s drain this pasta. And then I’m going to show you how we’re going to make this look really nice as far as a presentation is concerned. Now, Barilla pasta was pretty right on point. It took about, you know, 8 to nine minutes. And the pasta is al dente and it’s ready to go. So I have strained the pasta and I’ve put the pasta in this beautiful serving dish. Now this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to take just a little teeny bit of this sauce and put it on the pasta cuz we don’t want the pasta to stick. Okay, we put a little bit of the nice sauce in there. It smells so amazing. Oh my gosh. And it looks so beautiful. So, we’re just doing this so that the pasta doesn’t stick. Okay, so now here is the trick. You’re going to take your clams out separately. And you’re going to put them in another bowl. And you’ll see in a minute why. Because we’re going to build that pretty presentation dish. So that when you have company, if you don’t want to make their individual bowls at the uh stove and you want to present it at the table, this is how you’re going to want to present it. So we’ve taken out all of the open clams. And see all of the clams are opened. All right, going to put those aside. We’re now going to take this luscious sauce and pour the whole thing over all the linguini. And we’re going to mix it. Just make sure that all the linguini. Oh, just look. Look how amazing this looks. Just amazing. Now, what we’re going to do is we’re going to take all those beautiful clams and just pour them on top to make the presentation so amazing. Look at that. Look at that. Look at that, people. And then we’re going to take that parsley that we saved and we’re going to sprinkle it over the top. Now, look, this was less than 15 minutes where we made this amazing linguini with clam sauce. Now look, please try this recipe and if you do, please send me a comment. Let me know what you think. If there is a dish that you want me to make for you so that I can help you learn how to make it or you just want a different idea, let me know that as well. I would love it if you like my cooking and you like my videos. Please share, please subscribe, please like them. Um, but I hope you enjoy. Remember, this is my favorite dish. So, you’ve been cooking with Edie and you’ve been cooking with guys girl. See you next time.