How can I find wire rack/sieve to put clams or mussels on top, in giant bowl?

Question

I found instructions to place clams in a sieve or similar when purging to prevent them from taking up the sand and grit again. This makes a lot of sense, but I don’t have a matching sieve-bowl combo. What could be a good hack to create the same effect, especially when working with lots of clams in a large bowl or container?

How To De-Grit and Clean Clams • Just One Cookbook

3. Place a wire rack/sieve inside the large tray/bowl and put the clams in a single layer. The reason why you put the rack/sieve inside the tray/bowl is because any sand and grit the clams purge would stay on the bottom of the tray/bowl instead of being consumed by the clams again.

Answer 1

You just need to have something to raise the mussels.

Put a small dish upside down in your bowl, so that if grit/sand gets ejected it will not puddle in the dish.

Put your colander or sieve on top of the dish.

Fill with water put clams in the colander/sieve in the bowl.

Answer 2

I will try to expand on/clarify Max's answer using some pictures I just took.

The goal is to place the mussels in a permeable container (i.e., a container that lets water and grit pass through), inside a larger container filled with water. You want the smaller container to not touch the bottom or sides of the larger container, so that the mussels do not sit in their ejected grit.

An ideal setup is something like this, where the colander and large bowl fit together nicely with some separation:*

However, if you do not have two containers that fit together nicely, you just need to suspend your colander/sieve/wire rack in the bowl in some other way. For example, you can put a small dish or bowl upside down in the larger bowl:

And then place a sieve on top of the small bowl:**

You could come up with any number of more or less elaborate ways to raise the sieve inside the larger bowl (I wanted to show an example using butcher's twine, but could not find mine). The principle remains the same.

(*) The colander here might not actually be an ideal choice, as fairly large parts of it are not holes. Thus, grit might get caught in the colander rather than falling out.

(**) Note that as you can see in this picture, the sieve now sticks out above the larger bowl. If I were to actually use this method, I would use a shallower small bowl, or a deeper big bowl, and make sure that all mussels are submerged in either case.

Answer 3

We clean clams in the kitchen sink.

Put the clams in the sink, cover with lukewarm water (about 90 degrees Fahrenheit). The warm water causes the clams to open. Move your hands through the clams vigorously to rinse out grit and clean them. Leave the clams in the sink, rinse the grit down the drain, and refill with lukewarm water. Repeat until the the grit is removed. The grit simply falls to the bottom of the sink and can easily be rinsed down the drain. When they are clean a final fill and rinse with cold water will close the clams. We discard any clams that do not open, assuming they are dead. Typically three washes in lukewarm water removes all the grit. I have cleaned clams this way for fifty years, in New England, USA, with no gritty clam problems.