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How to prepare cockles

Name: How to prepare cockles
Prep time: 25 min
Cook time: 27 min
Total time: 1 h 52 min
Yield: 120 g
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 1 kg cockles; 1 shallot; 1 sprig parsley; 10 g butter; 100 ml dry white wine; Pepper

Cockles are small Atlantic shellfish which can be used in many delicious dishes. However, they need to be prepared with care before cooking.

Here is a simple way to do this.

581 K 1× 3.7/5 (170 reviews)867657

Duration

1 hour 55 min.

Difficulty

Easy

Last modified on: October 17^th 2026

Step by step recipe Ingredients Duration Nutritional facts Cost Comments Support the site ❤️

For 120 g, you will need:

1 1 kg cockles
2 1 shallot
3 1 sprig parsley
4 10 g butter
5 100 ml dry white wine
6 Pepper
Total weight: 1,135 grams

Times for this recipe

Preparation

25 min.

Resting

1 hour

Cooking

30 min.

All in all

1 hour 55 min.

Preparation 25 min.

Resting 1 hour

Cooking 30 min.

When should you start or finish this recipe?

If you start now, at , you will finish around: ?.Change start time

To finish around 7pm, you'll need to have started before: .Change end time

Step by step recipe

Step 1 - ⌛ 30 min.

Tip the cockles into a large container of cold water. Stir them round briefly and leave for 30 minutes.

Step 2 - ⌛ 3 min.

After this time, remove the cockles form the water. It is important not to tip the contents of the container through a sieve (which will not extract the sand), but remove them carefully from the water.

See how on this video.

Discard the water, rinse out the container, refill it with clean water and put the cockles back in.

Step 3 - ⌛ 30 min.

Leave to soak for another 30 minutes.

Repeat this operation until the water remains clear.

Step 4 - ⌛ 5 min.

Chop 1 shallot.

Rinse the parsley, keeping the stalk.

Step 5 - ⌛ 2 min.

Melt 10 g butter in a large pan then add the chopped shallot and parsley, but do not add salt or pepper. Cook without colouring for 1 minute.

Step 6 - ⌛ 5 min.

Add 100 ml dry white wine and bring to the boil.

Step 7 - ⌛ 2 min.

As soon as the white wine boils, add the washed cockles...

Step 8

...and cover.

Step 9

After a few minutes, the shells will begin to open. Stir them round in the pan so that those that are still closed are in the wine to give them the chance to open.

Step 10 - ⌛ 5 min.

After 3 or 4 minutes take out all the opened cockles, using a (spider) araignée or skimmer and put them in a sieve.

Step 11 - ⌛ 10 min.

Remove the contents of the cockles one at a time and discard the shells. Discard any cockles that have broken shells and any that have not opened.

Step 12 - ⌛ 2 min.

Rinse the cockles under cold running water to remove any remaining sand.

Step 13

If you plan to use the cooking liquid to make a sauce, which is a very good idea, you will need to reduce it.

Step 14 - ⌛ 3 min.

Pour the contents of the pan into a smaller pan through a fine sieve.

Step 15

Beware: the sand from the cockles will collect at the bottom of the pan, so it is important NOT to try and filter right to the last drop, but discard the liquid from the bottom (and the sand with it).

Step 16 - ⌛ 15 min.

Reduce the remaining saved cooking liquid by around half over low heat before using in your recipe.

Remarks

When preparing cockles, you will encounter two problems: sand, which is very unpleasant in the mouth (so do follow the advice to deal with this) and the saltiness of the cooking liquid. If you use this to make a sauce, do not add any salt.

Cockles are mostly shells and water: for 1 kg of cockles you will only end up with around 100 g of useful cockle meat (90% waste).

Keeping: A few hours in the fridge in a sealed container or covered with plastic film.

Source: Homemade.

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Nutritional information

	Proteins	Carbohydrates	Fats	Calories	Energy
Per 100 g	15 g RDI=23 %	2 g RDI=1 %	1 g RDI=1 %	76 kcal RDI=4 %	318 kJ RDI=4 %
Whole recipe	170 g RDI=262 %	21 g RDI=8 %	11 g RDI=16 %	862 kcal RDI=43 %	3,610 kJ RDI=43 %

Whole recipe

Possible allergens in this recipe: milk, sulfites

How much will it cost?

For 120 g

6.85 €

Note: Be careful, these prices are only an estimate, you can consult the table of prices by ingredients used for this estimate.

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