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White Beans with Clams, Basque Style

📍 Spain
⏱️Prep: 20 min
🔥Cook: 90 min
Total: 110 min
🍽️4 servings
Difficulty: Medium

Alubias con almejas is one of the Basque Country's most celebrated stews. Creamy Tolosa black beans are slow-cooked until tender, then finished with fresh clams steamed open in txakoli wine and garlic. The broth ends up rich and subtly briny — a beautiful meeting of land and sea in a single pot.

🛒 Ingredients

4 servings
  • 400g Tolosa white beans (soaked 12 hours)
  • 500g fresh clams
  • 1 onion
  • 4 garlic cloves
  • 200ml txakoli white wine
  • fresh parsley
  • extra virgin olive oil
  • salt

👨‍🍳 Step-by-step instructions

  1. Cook the beans from cold water with the whole onion and a drizzle of olive oil over low heat for 90 minutes.

  2. In a separate casserole, sauté the sliced garlic. Add the clams and white wine. Cover until they open.

  3. Strain the clam broth and add it to the beans.

  4. Add the opened clams to the beans. Adjust salt.

  5. Stir in a generous amount of chopped parsley and gently shake the casserole to emulsify the broth. Serve in a bowl.

💡 Chef's tip

Cook Tolosa beans without salt until the very end — salt toughens the skins. The clam broth is the soul of the stew: do not waste a single drop. Add the clams only in the final 3 minutes.

📝 Our take

Tolosa beans are small, dark and flavourful enough to stand alone, but the clams take them somewhere else entirely. The clam liquor released as they open mixes with the natural gelatine of the beans to create a thick, dark broth that is, without exaggeration, among the best things you can eat in Spain. A dish of gastronomic societies, winter and patience.

🍷 Wine & food pairing

Txakoli from the Basque Country — that slightly acidic, effervescent grape cider — is the classic pairing. A Getariako Txakolina white or Galician Albariño from Rías Baixas also work beautifully.

Suggested wine: Getaria Txakoli or Rioja Blanco

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