This Geoduck exceeded my expectations!!!!īig, beautiful, and delicious! This was our first time ordering and preparing geoduck ourselves, my husband and I were not disappointed. Living in Maine & owning a restaurant, I have very high standards for sure. It did not survive after arrival at destinationĪs always, wonderfully sweet and crunchy. I am still wondering why it took me so long to discover Taylor shellfish farms. I've been happy with prior orders of goeduck but recently I noticed the goeduck is considerably smaller Definitely will be buying again and recommending. This was my first experience with geoduck and it was very fresh and delicious. This second one was even larger (older) than the first, which was a good thing since I actually had more people over. I have always been a fan of mirugai and was so excited to learn that Taylor had it readily available! This was my second order and you did not disappoint. At last, I finally consider myself a true Northwesterner.Packaged perfectly, arrived on time, and DANG these things taste good!!! Two trips to the beach and six horse clams later, I claimed my first geoduck-with a little help from friends on a spring tide during the day. The exhilaration of pulling up your prize makes your effort more than worthwhile, even if it’s just a horse clam. It’s exhausting, tedious, and a not a little claustrophobic, and you may be tempted to give up, but don’t. At this point it’s just you and the clam, mano a mano. That’s not an option for recreational diggers-your best bet is to reach down into the hole as far as you can (bottoms up!), feel for the edges of the shell, and slowly pry the clam loose with your fingers. At some point you’ll need to start excavating by hand, and this is where the real challenge begins.Ĭommercial geoduck harvesters use a hydraulic water jet to liquefy the sandy substrate around the clam to make it easy to extract it from the bottom. Then plunge your garbage can or geoduck gun into the hole and continue digging inside the can, being careful not to damage the clam by cutting off its siphon or cracking its shell. Depending on the geography of the beach, you may also want to dig a small drainage canal to funnel the water out of the hole. Clam to horse clam to geo duck full#"It sounds like a psychotic sorcerer’s formula to say the geoduck must be sought at midnight, just two days after the full of the mad moon." -Euell Gibbonsīegin by excavating around the siphon, digging down about a foot or so deep. Only the most seasoned of geoduck hunters (not me!) can tell the difference between the tip of a geoduck or a horse clam siphon, so your best bet is to simply start digging. Touch a protruding siphon and you’ll get a squirt in the face as the clam, sensing danger, withdraws into the sand. As you walk along the beach at low tide, look closely and you’ll see dimples in the sand, also known as shows, that are the siphons of geoducks and horse clams. The best spots for geoducks are the mud flats and sandy beaches around the Sound. The time had come to accept the geoduck challenge. I’d never seriously considered that last point until I dined on geoduck steak at Xhin’s restaurant in Shelton-tender, clamlike, and delicious. It requires such a high level of sheer grit and determination that it’s a rite of passage for any self-respecting Northwesterner. And because men may be humbled by the clam’s unique anatomy, they’re always good for a ribald remark. After all, they’re Evergreen College’s mascot (“Let it all hang out”) and they’re often seen in Pike Place Market displays snaked along the slabs of salmon. Its name, “geoduck,” is neither pronounced like it’s spelled nor does it look anything like a duck: It’s “GOO-ee-duck.” According to David Gordon, author of the Field Guide to the Geoduck, the name likely comes from what the Nisqually Indians called the giant clam- gweduc -which means “dig deep.” Anyone who grew up in the Northwest knows at least a little about them. With a shell that’s too small for its large, fleshy body and an unnaturally long (make that unsightly ), wrinkled siphon that can grow up to three feet, the geoduck is one of nature’s true misfits. The beach was deserted, save for the occasional splash and grunt of a seal patrolling just offshore. The temperature was near freezing, thanks to the cloudless night that also revealed a full moon, making my headlamp pointless. It was late October at midnight on a friend’s beach in the South Sound. MY FIRST GEODUCK hunt was a complete bust.
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