How To Cook Lobsters, Clam Chowder, Fried Clams, and Clambakes from Woodman’s at Home

Katlyn Graham:  Hello! I’m Katlyn Graham.  Here with Bonnie Scatterday, the Shipping Manager at Woodman’s. Welcome Bonnie!

Bonnie Scatterday:  Hello! Thank you for having me today.

Katlyn:  Hello! Thanks for joining us to share your expertise. We’re discussing shipping seafood at Woodman’s, in particular the lobsters, clam chowder, fried clams, and even clambakes that Woodman’s ships.

Let’s start with the lobsters, a lot of people’s favorites. When I order a lobster, Bonnie, what does this package look like when it arrives at my house?

Bonnie:  Actually, all of the packages arrive in a similar box. It comes in a thick insulated stryofoam inside a cardboard box, and we have the shipping label on it. Of course, we have the Woodman’s bumper sticker on one side. We’re just celebrating a hundred years this year, we love to have that out and about in the public.

If you order the lobsters, there’ll be a large lobster sticker on the side of your box. In addition, there’ll be two PeriShip stickers because all of our product is guaranteed delivered fresh by PeriShip, which is a company that just helps it move through the system to make sure that if it gets stuck somewhere, it gets refrigerated. Just constantly, people are monitoring our shipments.

Katlyn:  That’s good. It arrives alive, which is a little daunting. I must admit, I haven’t actually cooked a lobster before. I imagine, I need a very large pot. Would you mind walking me through this?

Bonnie:  Lobster packages come in two, four, six, eight. Depending on how many lobsters you order, that would be the size of pot that you need. The standard lobster pot is a couple of gallon, so you want to get your water boiling nice and hot and be able to fit the lobsters in there to be covered.

Katlyn:  You just drop it right in.

Bonnie:  Yeah.

Katlyn:  It’s already banded, so I don’t need to be afraid or anything. What about these clambakes you ship out? What actually goes in those boxes?

Bonnie:  Inside the clambake box would be the number of lobsters you ordered. Say, it’s a clambake for two, you would have two pound and a quarter or pound and a half lobsters, you choose the size, and then two pound and a half bags of steamer clams, which are small little‑necked clams.  It comes with two bags of corn and clam chowder. Quite a package, it’s like a full dinner.

Katlyn:  [laughs] That is quite the package. There are a couple things you need to do there. Prepare the lobsters, and then corn is pretty self‑explanatory. I know some people grill it, some people boil it. Then, with the fried clams and the chowder, what do you do with those?

Bonnie:  The fried clams, you can fry them. We fry them in a big fryolator here, at Woodman’s. We use lard, but you can use…Most people don’t have lard in their house. You can use a vegetable oil or that type of thing. You can do it in any pan, frying pan size, you just put the oil in it, it says on the directions. Then you wait for it to reach a certain temperature, and then you clams in, and you fry them up.

The clam kit comes with evaporated milk and our seafood batter. What you do is, you take the shucked clams, and you put them in the evaporated milk to moisten them. Then you put them in the seafood batter, you shake them out to get off the excess batter, then you put them into the oil, and you watch them sizzle.

Katlyn:  Watch them sizzle.

Bonnie:  They smell delicious. [laughs]

Katlyn:  I bet. Oh my goodness. Now with the clam chowder, how does that ship?

Bonnie:  The clams and the chowder, we freeze. We get them in fresh and we vacuum seal them, and we freeze them for two day delivery.

Then, the chowder comes to you in a freezer bag. It’s clam chowder stock, so you pour that into a boiling pan, a sauce pan, quart pan, whatever you want to call it.

Then, you would add milk or cream, depending on how thick you like it. Then, you just very slowly heat it up, because you would never want to boil the milk, and it’s very simple.

Katlyn:  That does sound fairly simple. You have directions included in each box you send.

Bonnie:  It’s fun. The fried clam kit actually comes with, the paper boxes that we use at the restaurant, so you can get the feel of the restaurant and we include our homemade tartar sauce, which is fabulous.

So the clam kit comes with the tartar sauce and the chowder comes with actually two of our chowder mugs and some oyster crackers. That’s a complete package, as well.

Katlyn:  Very nice. You can pretend you’re at Woodmans at home. [laughs]

Well, thank you so much, Bonnie for explaining this.

Bonnie:  Thank you.