Wednesday Real Food Recipe – Easy Clam Chowder
It is finally here! The long promised, totally delicious, super easy clam chowder recipe. Marquis has become well known for this recipe, and it is the only clam chowder that my mom will eat. We made this recipe with some good friends who wanted to learn how to make Marquis’s famous chowder and decided this was the perfect opportunity to document the process and finally get it here on the blog.
Quick cooking tip: It saves me so much time and heartache when I prep all my ingredients before I start cooking. I chop anything that needs chopping and get all my ingredients lined up on the counter ready to go. The French call this “mise en place,” which translates roughly to “put in place,” and it’s a pretty darn smart idea.
Next, find some boys to be your grunt workers, and put them to work peeling the potatoes.
They can also be used later to stir the soup, if desired.
It’s up to you if you want to share the delicious, final product with your grunt workers or not.
I love mine with some fresh, warm biscuits on the side with a smear of real butter, yum!
- 4 thick slices of bacon, cut into small pieces or "lardons"
- 3 cups celery, chopped
- 2 cups onion, chopped
- 2 cups carrots, chopped
- 10 Yukon gold potatoes (can also use other kinds of potatoes if desired)
- Clam or chicken broth, enough to cover veggies (see further information below)
- 2 - 6.5 ounce cans of clams (can also use fresh or frozen clams)
- 1 pint of heavy cream
- 2 T Cornstarch mixed in ¼ cup of water (optional, for if you like thicker soup)
- salt and pepper to taste
- 1 Tablespoon fresh chives as garnish (optional)
- Cook the bacon until crispy, remove to a plate covered with a paper towel to drain.
- Leave about 1 tablespoons of bacon grease in the pan (that's probably close to what will be left) and add celery, onion, and carrots. Cook until softened.
- Season with salt and pepper at each step of the process.
- Add potatoes and cook until they start to soften.
- Cover all the veggies with broth. You can use clam broth if you can find it, or you can use chicken broth. Add in the juice from canned clams. You can also buy clam juice in jars next to the canned clams in the grocery store, add 1-2 jars with the chicken broth if that's what you are using.
- Cook soup until the veggies are nearly done, check with fork to see how soft they are.
- Add cream and taste soup. Add more salt and pepper to taste.
- If you like your soup to have a thicker consistency, mix cornstarch with water and add to soup, stirring constantly.
- Add canned clams right before serving soup. Overcooked clams get rubbery and gross. Canned clams are completely cooked, they just need to be in the soup long enough to get warm.
- Serve chowder and garnish with fresh chives, if desired.
The beauty of this soup is that you can change just a couple of things and have a completely new soup. Do you want chicken corn chowder? Leave out the clams and clam broth/juice, add chicken and corn, done! Do you want creamy potato soup? Just use chicken or vegetable broth and leave out the clams and clam juice, done! There are so many ways you can serve this up.
Are you a clam chowder fan? What is your favorite kind of soup?
Snow’s Clams, Minced, 6.5-Ounce Cans (Pack of 24)
This post has been linked to the Unprocessed Fridays link party on Girl Meets Nourishment, check out the other wonderful posts here. Also linked to the In and Out of the Kitchen link party on Feeding Big, see it here.
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Comments
I love clam chowder, but have never made it at home. This recipes looks great and I love the creaminess of it! Thanks for sharing this at the In and Out of the Kitchen Link Party! See you and another great recipe next week!
Thank you Cynthia, for letting me play in your link party! Always a pleasure. 🙂
How many servings does this recipe yield?
Good question! I’m not great at figuring out servings, but we usually get about 12 out of this recipe.