And when I say extreme, I mean extreme. My husband's all-time favorite clam chowder is thick. Massively thick. It could be mistaken for lumpy mashed potatoes. Okay, maybe not quite that thick. But almost. Pretty close.
I had a 28-ounce can of baby clams on hand, and figured it was time to make clam chowder. I'd made it before, but it's been a while, so I started looking at recipes. And hmmmm.... I found a few that used flour as a thickener. Interesting.
Many recipes call for salt pork or bacon, but I didn't have any of either, so I went porkless.
So .. I started with 4 large Idaho potatoes, which I peeled, cut into chunks, and cooked in salted water until they were done. I poured the water off until it was just below the level of the potatoes, then added a quart of milk and cooked the potatoes more, encouraging them to break up to thicken the liquid.
I melted 2 tablespoons of butter to a small frying pan and added 1/2 of a medium onion, diced finely. When the onions were softened, I added a couple tablespoons of flour to make a roux. I stirred and cooked, then added some of the liquid from the potatoes to the onion pan an let that cook and thicken. Then I emptied the contents of the frying pan into the soup stirred it around and let it cook and thicken.
I tasted it to make sure the raw flour taste was gone, then added a bottle of clam juice and about half the clams from that can. I'll be making something else with the rest of those clams. I let the soup cook to warm up the clams, then tasted and added salt and pepper. I didn't add salt sooner because I figured that the clam juice and clams might add some salt of their own.
Soup is supposed to mound up in the bowl, right? |
On day 2, the soup was even thicker after an overnight rest in the refrigerator.
I'm betting that most people wouldn't want a clam chowder this thick. No problem. Cut back on the roux or leave it out, and don't break the potatoes up as much. You can also add more milk and/or clam juice to thin it out even more. Hey, it's your soup. Make it the way you like it! I won't tell...
1 comment:
I like this "bare bones" recipe. I've never heard of clam chowder being made this way, but it sounds so easy. I do prefer chowder a lot thinner than this, but I think it's all about how you grow up.
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