Drag the rake through the bottom until you feel a scraping, then push the rake in deeper and pull it toward you and upwards to harvest the quahogs. Be sure to wear old shoes or sneakers to protect your feet. They will keep up to a week in the refrigerator if they are unopened and laid on their sides. Open the clam and detach the meat by cutting the other side of the adductor muscle. The quahog is now ready to be served on the half shell, used in recipes, or frozen for later use.
Quahogs make excellent chowder, clam cakes, stuffed clams, and clam sauce for pasta.
However, they are too tough to make good steamed or fried clams. Though purists would object, quahogs that are not going to be eaten raw may be steamed or placed in a microwave until they begin to open. These procedures make opening the clams much easier but they also slightly toughen the meats. Olsen, Stephen, Donald D. Robadue, Jr and Virginia Lee. An Interpretive Atlas of Narragansett Bay .