6 Awesome Ways to Cook with Cockles, Your New Favorite Bivalve

Whether served on their own, tossed in a light pasta, or paired with beans and cherry tomatoes, cockles are soon to be one of your most beloved bivalves. Similar to clams, cockles are small marine molluscs with briny, flavorful flesh inside a round, ribbed shell. Here are some of our favorite ways to serve the seafood.

Steamed Cockles in Scallion Broth

Here, Susan Spungen simply enhances deliciously briny cockles with white wine and scallions in a savory broth.

Cod with Cockles and White Wine

This light, summery dish can be on your table in 30 minutes. Chef Jose Garces prepares it with hake, a relatively hard-to-find cousin of cod, and fresh juice from shucked clams to make the delicious broth, but you can use cod and bottled clam juice. 

Cockles with Beans and Cherry Tomatoes in Garlic Broth

Test kitchen editor Kay Chun turns cockles into a rich, hearty stew with just a few simple ingredients.

Seafood and Chicken Paella with Chorizo

To keep seafood moist and delicious, chef Tamara Murphy sautés shrimp and steams mussels and cockles before adding them to paella.

Manila Clams with Shiro Dashi and Basil

Any small clam will work in this flavorful dish from 2020 F&W Best New Chef Trigg Brown: cockles, baby Manilas, or littlenecks.

 Spaghetti alla Pirata

This seafood pasta, popular along the Mediterranean coast, features cockles, mussels, and squid. Pino Luongo says it was invented in the Italian fishing village of Porto Santo Stefano.