On his days off from his Los Angeles restaurants Mélisse and Charcoal Venice, chef Josiah Citrin decamps to his backyard for cookouts with family and friends. “I like the visual and acoustic feel of cooking over a live fire,” he says. One of Citrin’s crowd-pleasers is a clambake cooked right on the grill—which he says is “faster, easier, and more versatile” than the traditional dig-a-hole-in-the-sand approach.
What’s more, because this technique cooks all the clambake components in a single foil pouch, you can introduce another layer of flavor—Citrin’s brown sugar-and-jalapeño butter.
“It allows the flavors to really cook into the seafood,” he says.
For access to exclusive gear videos, celebrity interviews, and more, subscribe on YouTube!
Makes 4 servings
Ingredients
- Sweet and Spicy Seafood Butter:
- 1 cup melted butter
- 1 1⁄2 cups white wine
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 tbsp chopped parsley
- 3 tbsp light brown sugar, packed
- 1 tbsp jalapeño powder
- 1 tsp each smoked paprika, dried oregano, celery seeds, and sea salt
- 1⁄2 tsp each ground coriander and granulated garlic
- Clambake:
- 1 lb red potatoes, halved
- 2 ears corn, shucked and quartered
- 3 garlic cloves, sliced
- 4 sprigs fresh thyme
- 24 raw shrimp
- 24 littleneck clams, soaked in room-temperature salted water for 1 hour
- Sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
- 1 lb andouille sausage
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Country sourdough bread
How to make it
