Best Seafood Chowder Recipe is made with shrimp, clams, and crab meat; a delicious, creamy “chowdah” bursting with flavor!
We are so in love with clam chowder, especially this time of year. Today’s recipe, Best Seafood Chowder Recipe, you’re going to want to add to your holiday menu! And friends, have you bought my new cookbook? Buy Big Boards for Families today! It’s “editor’s pick” on Amazon this month!
Table of Contents
Best Seafood Chowder Recipe
Perfect for any soup night, this recipe is particularly “special” on the weekend. Like a Friday night … :) It’s a soulful meal, and everyone just seems to love a good bowl of “chowdah.”
Made with your favorite seafood, we added bay shrimp, crab meat and clams!
It’s creamy, and delicious served with a hot crunchy bread.
Friends, I love my home in the fall months. It’s crispy cold in the mornings, and warm and breezy in the afternoon. It reminds me of how much I love soup this time of year.
I can smell autumn dancing in the breeze. The sweet chill of pumpkin, and crisp sunburnt leaves.
– Ann Drake
Ingredients for Best Seafood Chowder
Bacon
Butter
Celery + leeks + onion + garlic
Potatoes
Broth
Clam juice + clams
Salt + pepper + dried thyme
Flour
Half-and-half
Salad shrimp (bay shrimp)
Crabmeat
Bay leaf
Old Bay seasoning
Chopped fresh chives or green onions, for garnish
TIP FOR BREAD: I love to keep my favorite bread in the freezer. When company comes, or I need a loaf for last-minute, I put a loaf in the microwave to defrost for a couple of minutes. Preheat oven to 400 degrees: Bake thawed bread for 10 minutes. If the bread is still frozen, bake for about 15-20 minutes.
OurBest Clam Chowder video has over 22 million views on Facebook! That’s right, it’s that good, and gets a lot of controversy with the bacon. HA. [PS. Do you follow me on Facebook?]
Do you love bacon in clam chowder? We do! So we have added it to this Best Seafood Chowder Recipe, too.
A few chowder tips:
Always add the clam juice.
Optional to add bacon, but it’s SO good. It’s great for garnish!
Add chicken bouillon powder for more taste, if you want.
You can add fewer potatoes, and cut them really small.
Leeks are optional, but they make the soup SO good.
How to make seafood chowder
Cook the bacon (drain fat, but keep some in the pot). Add butter to the drippings; saute celery, leek, and onion until tender. Add garlic.
Stir in the potatoes, broth, clam juice, salt, pepper and thyme.
Combine flour and 1 cup half-and-half until smooth. Gradually stir into the soup. Cook until thickened.
Stir in (drained) clams, shrimp, crabmeat, and remaining half-and-half. Add in 4 strips of crumbled bacon, and season to taste with Old Bay seasoning.
Crumble the reserved 2 strips of bacon. Garnish chowder with crumbled bacon and fresh chopped chives.
Serve with HOT crunchy bread!
Share soup with friends
We live in unusual times, but we can still gather in small groups.
I say, take simple pleasures this fall, like hosting a small meal. Cook, serve the food (you can always make my Clam Chowder Dinner Board), and listen and learn. We’ve enjoyed being with friends, family, and new neighbors this year. Even with many restrictions, being together and sharing meals has been a gift.
We anticipate tomorrow, with joy in our hearts, while living deeply in the present.
Being present with good food and good conversation!
3-4small potatoes, red potatoes or Yukon gold, peeled and cubed
2cupsbroth, chicken or vegetable
2 8ouncebottles clam juice
1tspwhite pepper
1tspsalt
1tspdried thyme
2/3cupall-purpose flour
4cupshalf-and-half, divided
36 ½ oz canswhole clams, chopped into chunky pieces, drained
6ozsalad shrimp, bay shrimp
6ozcrabmeat, shredded
Bay leaf
1-2TbspOld Bay seasoning
Chopped fresh chives or green onions, for garnish
Instructions
In a Dutch oven, cook bacon over medium heat until crisp. Remove to paper towels to drain; set aside. Add butter to the drippings (you can spoon out some of the drippings if you don’t want to use that much); saute celery, leek, and onion until tender. Add garlic; cook 1 minute longer. Stir in the potatoes, broth, clam juice, salt, pepper and thyme. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; simmer, uncovered, for 15-20 minutes or until potatoes are tender.
In a small bowl, combine flour and 1 cup half-and-half until smooth. Gradually stir into the soup. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until thickened.
Stir in (drained) clams, shrimp, crabmeat, and remaining 3 cups of half-and-half; heat through (do not boil); turn down to low heat; add the bay leaf. Cook for additional 2-3 minutes on low heat. Add in 4 strips of crumbled bacon, and season to taste with Old Bay seasoning.
Crumble the reserved 2 strips of bacon. Garnish chowder with crumbled bacon and fresh chopped chives.
Instead, ladle a small amount of broth into a separate bowl and let it cool. Add a few tablespoons of flour or cornstarch to the bowl and whisk until it's blended smooth. Next, bring the soup to a simmer and add the mixture back to the pot. Pro tip: Don't dump in the entire mixture at once.
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.
The vegetables or seafood, the focal ingredient of the soup. Ancillary ingredients which may include cream, diced onions, bacon, or herbs. The cooking liquid—usually broth or stock. A thickening agent—usually cornstarch, flour, or potatoes.
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.
Use heavy cream as a keto-friendly thickening option for your soups and broths. Heavy cream has more fat than regular whole milk, so you can add it to your soup recipes without worrying about it curdling.
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.
You really only have three choices when it comes to dairy for your chowder. You can use whole milk (hom*o milk), you can use heavy cream, or you can use a combination of the two.
These three ingredients can be used in place of heavy cream with a one-to-one substitution with just a few caveats. Sour cream will add tanginess to your dish, and if you use it for soups or other hot dishes, it's best to add it in at the end to avoid curdling.
New England clam chowder is perhaps the most popular and well-known iteration of the dish. It's a classic combination of clams, onions, corn, celery, bacon or salt pork, and potatoes.
Russets or all-purpose baking potatoes are high in starch and low in moisture. In soups, they will soak up the liquid and lose their shape. This makes them the ideal choice for making creamy soups or thickening a runny soup. Try using Russet potatoes to create the perfect Loaded Potato Soup.
Customarily, chowder included onion, potatoes, and cream. Nowadays, not all chowders adhere to these guidelines. New England Clam Chowder is sometimes made with milk, whereas Manhattan Clam Chowder doesn't have any milk or cream but has a tomato base instead.
It's important to note that cornstarch has twice the thickening power of flour. If you need to substitute cornstarch to thicken liquid in a recipe that calls for ¼ cup (four tablespoons) flour, you only need two tablespoons cornstarch.
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.
It all comes down to the soup base or broth. New England Clam Chowder contains cream for a white, cream-based broth. Manhattan Clam Chowder has a tomato base, giving the broth a red color. The lesser-known Rhode Island Clam Chowder has a clear broth without tomato or cream.
Put a tablespoon of either into a small bowl and stir in 2-3 tbsp of the soup until you have a smooth mixture. Stir this back into the soup and bring it to a simmer. Cook for a few minutes to allow the starch granules to burst to thicken, and to cook out any flour flavour.
If you'd like your chowder a little thicker, though, you can thicken it with a cornstarch slurry. Simply stir cornstarch into a small amount of cold water (or another liquid, such as wine or stock), then stir the mixture into the simmering chowder.
Both flours and starches help thicken sauces effectively. However, if you add them directly into your soup, they will clump. Instead, whisk a small amount of soup into the starch or flour until it dissolves, then add the resulting mixture into the soup.
Roux is a cooked mixture of flour and fat and is used to thicken soups and sauces. A crumbly mixture, it is added to liquid and boiled until thick, resulting in a rich, heavy, and opaque liquid.
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