HOUSTON — Cleaner than the Board of Health.

That is the only way to describe the performance the Yankees delivered Saturday night, when they overwhelmed the Astros, 7-0, in Game 1 of the ALCS in front of a sold-out Minute Maid crowd of 43,311.

From the muscle department, Gleyber Torres went 3-for-5 with a homer and five RBIs, Giancarlo Stanton hit a laser over the center-field wall and Gio Urshela lofted a homer into the right-field seats.

Masahiro Tanaka added to his reputation as an October stud with six shutout innings in which he faced the minimum 18 batters.

DJ LeMahieu and Aaron Judge provided sparkling defense that helped the winners pull off three double plays. LeMahieu dug three balls out of the dirt and Judge doubled Alex Bregman off first with a bullet throw from right center in the fifth.

When asked if this was the Yankees’ best game of the season, Brett Gardner said, “With the atmosphere and coming in here, I would say yeah.”

The only blemish was Didi Gregorius and Torres each stopping on a Jose Altuve grounder up the middle that put runners at the corners with one out in the seventh but was erased when Adam Ottavino fed Bregman a 5-4-3 double-play pill.

The victory gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven affair that continues Sunday with Game 2. The Yankees will start James Paxton and the Astros will counter with Cy Young candidate Justin Verlander.

It also was the Yankees’ fourth postseason win in four games and took away the Astros’ home-field advantage.

“It all starts with starting pitching. You can’t bullpen your way to a ring,’’ said Zack Britton, who pitched a scoreless eighth.

Tanaka allowed one hit — a one-out single to Kyle Tucker — that was negated by Robinson Chirinos banging into a 5-4-3 double play to end the third. In six innings, Tanaka walked one and struck out four.

Pitching in a ballpark that hadn’t treated him well (0-2 with a 5.14 ERA in five starts including the postseason), Tanaka dominated with pinpoint control that allowed him to need only 68 pitches to get 18 outs.

In seven career postseason starts, Tanaka is 5-2 with a 1.32 ERA, and none of them were better than Saturday night’s effort.

Elevated from sixth to third in the batting order after going 3-for-4 with a homer in Game 3 of the ALDs in which Torres batted .417 (5-for-12) with four RBIs, the 22-year-old second baseman and two-time All-Star doubled the Yankees’ first run home in the fourth inning, made it 2-0 with a one-out homer to left off Zack Greinke in the sixth and dumped a two-run single into center against Ryan Pressly in the seventh that stretched the Yankees’ lead to 5-0.

Torres finished the game 3-for-5 with five RBIs thanks to driving DJ LeMahieu in from third with a ninth-inning ground out for the game’s final run.

“The key is just I [got a] really good plan to go to home plate,’’ said Torres, whose five RBIs are the most in ALCS history for a player 22 or younger and marked just the third time that had happened in postseason history.

Stanton said Torres could be just getting started.

“He is ready to do damage,’’ Stanton said. “He took a lot of good pitcher’s pitches tonight and waited for his.’’

On his way out of the clubhouse, Gardner said he would welcome a repeat in Game 2.

“I would like to do it again [Sunday],’’ said Gardner of duplicating an almost perfect game top to bottom.