Chowder Recipes | Taste of Home (2024)

FAQs

What ingredient does chowder always have? ›

Customarily, chowder included onion, potatoes, and cream. Nowadays, not all chowders adhere to these guidelines.

Add Flour Or Cornstarch

You can thicken soup by adding flour, cornstarch, or another starchy substitute. For the best results, never add flour or cornstarch directly to your soup. If you do, it will clump up on top. Instead, ladle a small amount of broth into a separate bowl and let it cool.

What Is Clam Chowder Supposed to Taste Like? New England clam chowder is a mix of creamy soup and briny, salty, chewy clams. This is complemented with soft onions, celery, and cubed potatoes. Seasonings like pepper enhance the soup, preventing it from being bland.

The shortcut to making anything taste good is sizzling some onions and garlic in oil, and canned clam chowder is no exception. Sauteed alliums (onions, garlic, and other related vegetables) will add complexity, savoriness, and sweetness to your canned soup, lending it just a touch of homemade flavor.

Use waxy potatoes, sometimes called boiling potatoes, for potato chowder. These keep their shape the best when cooked in a chowder for a long time, especially in a slow cooker. Yukon Gold potatoes are the recommended option, but red potatoes or russet potatoes will work, too.

To replace 1 cup (237 mL) of heavy cream in your recipe, add 2 tablespoons (19 grams) of cornstarch to 1 cup (237 mL) of milk and stir, allowing the mixture to thicken. You can use whole milk or opt for skim milk to help slash the calories and fat content of your recipe.

The most classic and surefire way to thicken a broth-based soup is with a cornstarch slurry. Whisk together equal parts cornstarch (or arrowroot) and water or broth, then whisk it into the pot of soup. A good ratio to get to a pleasant thickness without your soup tasting goopy or heavy is one tablespoon.

Stabilize with a Starch

Starches like flour or cornstarch help stabilize the milk emulsion. This will prevent it from separating. A common technique is to thicken your sauce or soup with roux before adding the milk. This changes the makeup of the liquid and prevents curdling.

Cornstarch has twice the thickening power of flour. When a gravy, sauce, soup or stew recipe calls for flour, use half as much cornstarch to thicken. To thicken hot liquids, first mix cornstarch with a little cold water until smooth. Gradually stir into hot liquid until blended.

Unlike cream, which runs the risk of splitting once added, evaporated milk can be mixed into the chowder's entourage when the clams are added. Thus, a steamy bowl of clam chowder is created, whose flavor whole-heartedly sings with a warming fishy essence. It's rich, it's divine, it's utterly moreish.

What is the most popular chowder? ›

New England Clam Chowder is the most famous and most popular clam chowder. It's been around for centuries, so it's possible its longevity has contributed to its popularity. It's also thick and velvety, making it a comforting palate-pleaser, particularly on cold days.

Add acidity: A squeeze of lemon or lime juice, a dash of vinegar, or a splash of wine can brighten the flavors of a soup and make it taste more complex. Experiment with different cooking methods: Roasting or caramelizing vegetables before adding them to the soup can bring out thei.

Add acidic ingredients.

Foods that have a great deal of acidity, like lemon juice, vinegar, white wine, and tomato puree, can help liven up the flavor of bland-tasting bone and other broths.

You can also add a little sweet smoked paprika, zest with parsley or cilantro, and toss in some oregano. Packed with nutrients, all these spices turn up the heat on both taste and health.

Sometimes, this can occur when the chowder sits in the fridge, as the texture and taste become watered-down, as mentioned by FoodsGuy. Or, when you're adding salt to the soup while the potatoes are cooking, the potatoes may absorb all that saltiness and leave the broth wanting more, explains DeadSpin.

Chowder is a soup with cream or milk mixed with ingredients such as potatoes, sweet corn, smoked haddock, clams and prawns, etc. Some cream-style chowders do not use cream, and are instead prepared using milk and a roux to thicken them.

Chowder is a rich, creamy soup that often contains clams and potatoes. Seafood chowders are typical in the Northeast, with New England clam chowder being the most famous. Other seafood chowders skip the clams and swap in scallops, shrimp, lobster, crab or even fish like cod or smoked salmon.

In other words, chowder is a very specific sort of soup. It is almost always thick and chunky (bisque, another type of soup, is generally smooth). Chowder is usually either corn based or seafood based, or both (as in our recipe for Salmon and Corn Chowder, which appeared in this space in early July).

Chowders don't necessarily require clams—other types of seafood or even vegetables can be the soup's centerpiece, and regional variants abound. But the bone-white, clam-filled version is by far the most popular.