Chowder is a bowlful of comfort thick with crackers or flour and milk and flavored with salt pork. Usually it stars seafood, although a farmhouse chowder can be made with the likes of corn and potatoes, and Illinois has a chowder all its own (see downstate chowder). In New England, chowder is different from stew, the latter meaning warm milk or cream seasoned with salt and pepper, pooled with melted butter, and containing nothing but large morsels of fish or lobster, clams, or oysters: no potatoes or vegetables of any kind. Chowder, no matter how it’s made, always contains potatoes. There are several basic varieties.
The Maine Diner consistently wins blue ribbons for its mighty seafood chowder.
MANHATTAN CHOWDER
Red like minestrone and thick with many kinds of chopped-up vegetables, in addition to clams.
Boston’s Durgin-Park is a bastion of traditional Yankee cooking, including chowder.
NEW ENGLAND CHOWDER
Milk or cream-based, enriched with the flavor of salt pork, and thick with potatoes. Clams are the customary ingredient, although it can be made with pieces of flatfish, shrimp, oysters, or scallops.
RHODE ISLAND CHOWDER
A creamy bisque with just enough tomatoes to turn it blushing pink. Traditionally served with fried clam cakes on the side.
SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND CHOWDER
Found only along the Connecticut shore and into Rhode Island. Made without milk or cream and no vegetables other than potatoes and onion, it is minced clams and their nectar: a bracing, steel-gray broth made to pique the appetite before a full-bore shore dinner.
OREGON CHOWDER
Featuring clams and nuggets of potato, Oregon chowder ranges from rib-sticking to elegant and usually is flavored with smoked bacon or salt pork. It is thick enough that when it is served with a pat of butter on top, the butter forms a pool that does not blend until it is stirred in.
Oregon chowder: thick enough to float a butter pat.
Southern New England Clear Broth Clam Chowder
“The trouble with most people’s chowder is they cook it too long,” said Flo Klewin of Kitchen Little in Mystic, Connecticut. “It gets too strong. Take it off the heat fast if you want it to be nice.” The result is a gentle-flavored broth that tastes as much of the ocean as of clams.
8 slices thick bacon (about ½ pound)
2 cups chopped onion
2 ½ cups diced redskin potatoes, skin on
3 cups clam broth
1 8–20 large, hard-shell clams, shucked and drained, and their liquor
Pepper
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
1. Cut the bacon into 1-inch pieces. Fry in a large pot until crisp. Remove the bacon pieces and save them to put in omelets the next morning. Add onion to the rendered bacon fat and sauté until soft. Add potatoes, clam broth, and enough water to fully cover the potatoes (at least 1 cup). Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer 12 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
2. Coarsely cut the clams (do not mince or use a food processor). You should have about 3 cups of clam meat. Strain the clam liquor through a double-layer of cheesecloth to remove impurities, or boil it and skim off the foam that rises to the top. Add the clams and clam liquor to the chowder pot. Bring it back to a boil. Simmer 3 minutes. Remove from heat and add pepper to taste. Sprinkle on basil; serve with crackers.
6–8 SERVINGS
