Shrimp, mussels and little neck clams, all dropped into a cast iron pan filled with white wine, butter, herbs and garlic to make a seafood butter boil. To serve, set the seafood/butter/wine laden pan in the middle of the table and hand out forks. Your family and friends will take care of the rest. This recipe is more like a guideline to be used with whatever seafood looks best at your fish monger. It will also work with scallops, lobster, crawfish, chunks of whole fish (use meatier fish over flakier fish), squid and octopus. We did this on a gas grill, but it can be done on a charcoal grill, kamado and even a pellet cooker.

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Seafood Butter Boil is one of those dishes that I make all the time and just assumed that I had documented it for the website. I hadn’t and that’s a shame. This is one of my go-to recipes that can be made in minutes and is absolutely amazing! Did I mention that this is low calorie too? No? Good, because it’s not.

I mean, we are cooking seafood (which is pretty healthy) but we are simmering it in butter, wine, herbs and garlic. I guess if you don’t dunk the seafood back in the butter it’s not terrible. My problem is, that butter/wine/herb/garlic sauce is sooooooo good that I dip in it every time. Aaaaaaand that’s how I start off my time at a WW meeting!

Use what you have

This recipe can be done with just about any seafood. I’ve done this with scallops, lobster tails, bivalves, chunks of hearty fish, shrimps, prawns (honestly, I have no idea what the difference is between the last two), and all manner of herbs and white wines. There is no wrong answer here, except for maybe oysters because the outside shells are so dirty. Just go with what you have that looks good. Now let’s get back to this amazing and oh so simple recipe.

What is seafood boil sauce made of?

For the more traditional seafood boil you would be adding lots of cajun seasoning, Old Bay, garlic and onion, some red pepper flakes, onions, brown sugar, stock, some citrus, parsley and butter. That’s now what I’m going for here. Indeed, this is a more elegant version of that with white wine and butter being the primary ingredients which allows the seafood to be the shining star of this dish.

if you are interested in a recipe with a bigger focus on wine for the sauce and less on the butter, I give you Creamy Mussels with Pinot Gris.

Seafood Butter Boil Ingredients:

2 lbs little neck clams (soaked in tap water to remove the saltiness and any sand)
1.5 lbs U16-U20 shrimp
1.5 lbs mussels (de-bearded and rinsed)
1 lb salted butter
2 tbsp fresh garlic (minced)
2 sprigs thyme
1 bay leaf (optional)
1 cup buttery white wine

Don’t make this mistake

First off, take the clams and put them all into a bowl that they can be completely submerged in tap water. Soak them for 20-30 minutes before cooking. I’d show you some pics of how to do this, but we forgot this step and ours were really salty. Don’t make the same mistake we did!?!

Pro Tip 1 ~ When it comes to any bivalves (clams, mussels, oysters), make sure they are tightly shut or will shut themselves if you tap on the top or bottom. If they don’t close, it means they are dead. Since there is no way of telling if they died 12 seconds ago or 12 hours ago, throw them away. Likewise, after they cook, if any don’t open, don’t serve those either.

De-beard the clams

Some of the clams will have little hair looking things sticking out of the flat side of the mussel. Pin the hairs between your thumb and a the edge of a butter knife to get a good grip and pry them out of the mussel. We did do this step but nobody got any pics. A quick google search will show you how this is done.

Grill Prep

Now, prepare the grill for medium to medium-high heat (350F-400F degrees), which, in this case is my gas grill. Once the grill is up to temp, I placed the grill safe pan over the heat. I went with a standard cast iron pan and everything barely fit. Be ready with a secondary pot or pan to dump some of the butter/wine/herb/garlic sauce and seafood into. The other option is to put as much in as fits, serve that portion once it is ready and then add in the rest of the ingredients.

How to Make a Seafood Butter Boil
Bring up the temp of the grill to between 350F-400F and add the butter, wine, herbs and garlic. When all that has melted, place in the little neck clams and close the lid for 2-3 minutes. Then add the shrimp and close the lid for 1-2 minutes. Finally, add the mussels and close the lid. After a couple minutes, check to see that the mussels and clams have opened up. If they haven’t opened, close the lid and keep checking every 1-2 minutes. Once all of the bivalves have opened up, your seafood butter boil is ready to serve.

Begin by dropping the butter, wine, garlic and herbs into the pan:

Butter melting in a cast iron pan next to a bottle of wine — What better buttery wine than one named Butter GrillinFools Images ©

Once the butter/wine/herb/garlic concoction starts to bubble, it’s time to put the seafood in. For this recipe, we went with the little neck clams first because they take the longest to cook:

Little neck clams going into the butter and wine — Round 1 of seafood GrillinFools Images ©

Pro Tip 2 ~ If you need to add more liquid to cover more of the seafood, add more wine. No one has ever claimed that was a bad idea, ever.

After a couple minutes, we added the shrimps:

Shrimp in a cast iron pan on the grill — Round 2 GrillinFools Images ©

The lid is your friend

Then I dropped the lid on the cast iron pan to help to steam all the seafood that is not in the butter sauce:

Seafood Butter Boil 1 1 | GrillinFools — GrillinFools Images ©

Cast Iron Seafood Butter Boil 1 | GrillinFools — GrillinFools Images ©

After about 90-120 second of the shrimps cooking, I drop in the mussels:

Mussels pouring into a cast iron pan — Round 3 Mussels for the Muscle Grill GrillinFools Images ©

The lid goes back on until the clams and the mussels pop open:

An open clam — This is how to know the clams are ready to eat GrillinFools Images ©

Can you overcook a seafood boil?

Sure you can overcook a seafood boil, but it’s hard to do. What happens when food dries out? It has the fat cooked out of it. And while there isn’t a lot of fat in seafood, we are cooking it in fat so we have a much larger window to get this right. So don’t sweat it if you go a little long on some of these steps.

How do you eat a seafood boil?

Simply spoon some into a bowl or and ladle over that butter sauce in the pan. If you are a little more daring, hand everyone a fork and let them all go to town on the pan. That’s completely up to you. We used soup crocks:

Seafood in a soup crock — I cant think of a better use of a soup crock can you GrillinFools Images ©

Nectar of the gods

Don’t forget this step. Make sure to pour some of that butter/wine/herb/garlic sauce over every bowl for dipping:

Pouring butter over the soup crock full of seafood — Like I said healthy Oh wait GrillinFools Images ©

And just because I love action shots, here’s a bonus:

More butter pouring into the soup crock full of seafood — I just love those action shots GrillinFools Images ©

As shown here we have a wonderful bowl of butter poached seafood sitting in a slurry of butter, wine, herbs, garlic and seafood stock:

Seafood Butter Boil Recap:

As I mentioned above, there are no wrong answers here. Go with whatever looks good at your local fish monger or grocery store. Because once you simmer it in butter, wine, garlic and herbs, it’s all going to taste amazing. Trust me! Also, toast up some crusty bread to dunk into the butter sauce. Trust me on that one too!

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Recipe Card:

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Seafood Butter Boil

Shrimp, clams and mussels poached in butter, wine, herbs and garlic all in a cast iron pan on the grill to make a Seafood Butter Boil

Prep Time20

Cook Time15

Total Time35

Course: Appetizer, Finger Food, Seafood

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Finger Food, Fish, Seafood, Seafood Boil

Keyword: #Grilled, Appetizer, Bacon Wrapped Shrimp, Butter, Butter Boil, cast iron, Clams, Finger Food, Fish, Gas Grill, Grill, grilled seafood, Grilling, Little Neck Clams, Mussels, Poach, Poached, Poached Seafood, Seafood Boil, Seafood Butter Boil

Servings: People

Equipment

1 Cast iron pan and lid

Ingredients

2 lb little neck clams soaked in tap water to remove the saltiness and any sand
1.5 lb U16-U20 shrimp
1.5 lb mussels de-bearded and rinsed
1 lb salted butter
2 tbsp garlic minced
2 sprig dried thyme
1 bay leaf optional
12 oz buttery white wine

Instructions

Completely submerge the clams into a bowl of tap water for 20-30 minutes to clean out the sand and salt water
"De-beard" the mussels
Set the grill for 350f-400f
Place a grill safe pan or pot big enough to accommodate all the ingredients
Drop in the butter, wine, garlic and herbs
Once the butter melts and begins to bubble, toss in the clams
After a couple minutes of the clams simmering in the butter concoction, drop the shrimp in and set the lid on top of the vessel
After 90-120 seconds, remove the kid and add the mussels and put the lid back on
Once all the clams and mussels open up (about 3-5 minutes) remove from the heat and serve
Ladle some seafood into a bowl and then add some of the butter slurry to each bowl to dunk in
Toast some crusty bread for dunking in the butter sauce

Video

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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This article was initially published on: May 5, 2021