Creamy Clam Chowder Recipe

Hey, I'm John Kanell, and today on Preppy Kitchen, we're making a creamy and delicious clam chowder. So let's get started. First off, we have a bit of prep work to do, so grab a large onion. We're gonna give this a dice. I also wanna chop two sticks of celery, peel and dice two large potatoes, and of course, mince some garlic. I have a real soft spot for clam chowder. It's one of the recipes my mom would make quite often when I was young. But the secret, in my opinion, to a good clam chowder, aside from getting the flavors correct, is to not overcook the clams. They're just gonna be warmed through, and then they'll have a nice texture. If they're overcooked, they're gonna be rubbery and horrible. Onions chopped. Grab two big sticks of celery. Remove the ends, and we're gonna give them a nice chop as well. I'm also gonna split them down the middle where they get thicker. Transfer this to a bowl to set aside for a bit. I'm gonna use two russet potatoes now. This will give you a lot of the hardiness that you love in a clam chowder. But when we cook it, the starch will leach out, and that'll add to the creaminess without having to use that much cream or half and half. We need to dice our potatoes, but you do not wanna have giant chunks of potato on your spoon, so I would go for around a quarter of an inch or so. Cut the potato lengthwise. Twice, different directions. And then we can just give it a chop. Nice, bite-sized, regularly cut pieces. You also don't wanna have any giant chunks of potato in tiny little ones because they'll cook at different speeds. Uncooked potato's not delicious. By the way, if you like my videos, go ahead and hit that subscribe button. There's two new recipes every single week. So I'm in Connecticut, and clam chowder is a New England dish that's pretty well-loved around the country, in my opinion. And it's thought that it was brought over by the French, and I can totally see that because potato soups became really popular in France. Once the potato was introduced, it's funny because potatoes were thought of as disgusting since they came out of the ground. So French chefs were tasked with making delicious dishes to convince people that no, potatoes are actually lovely, and you will enjoy them. This is a derivative of one of those recipes. Ooh, in fact, just by the by, if you wanted to sub out half of the onion or even all of it for some leeks, that would be delicious too. This recipe uses about three cloves of garlic. Just go ahead and remove the skins and give them a mince, or use a garlic press to save time, which is what I'm gonna do today. My prep work is all done. Grab a large Dutch oven or big pot, and we're gonna pop our bacon in and get it nice and crisp and render out all of that delicious fat to cook our ingredients in. Grab four strips of streaky bacon, place them into your cold pot, and we're gonna cook this up until that bacon is nice and crispy. Four strips in, place this over medium-high heat, and we're gonna cook it up. The bacon will cook for anywhere between six to 10 minutes. It really depends on your cooktop. While that's cooking, go ahead and chop your parsley, open up your tins of clams, and maybe straighten up a little bit. There's some things to put away. Once your bacon's cooked through and crispy, we're gonna remove it using a slotted spoon or fork and then use that delicious fat to cook our onions and celery in. We're gonna supplement the bacon fat with two tablespoons of butter. Just plop that in. Melt that over medium-high heat, and then we can add our onion, celery, and garlic. Butter's all melted, so let's add in the onions, celery, and the garlic. Give that a mix. We're gonna cook this for about four minutes or until the onion becomes tender, then we'll go on to the next step. If you don't eat pork but you still wanna make this recipe, you have a couple options. Omit the bacon and use two more tablespoons of butter, so four total, or instead of the butter, you could use duck fat, which is really flavorful and delicious, and, you know, no pork. This smells so good already, you know this soup will be delicious. After about four minutes of cooking, my onions have softened, and it's time to add in a third of a cup of all-purpose flour. Just sprinkle it in. Give it a mix and keep sprinkling so it's nice and evenly covered. We're gonna cook this for about a minute so the flour is cooked through, and you're basically forming the startings of a roux using the butter and bacon fat and the flour. It'll give you a really lovely, creamy base to the soup. Once your flour is cooked, it's time to add the juice from the clams. Not the clams themselves, that would be disastrous, but just the juice will give you a lovely flavor. Give that a really good stir. So just right away, you can see this became almost like a gel. That's a really good thing. Now we're gonna stir in a cup and a half of chicken stock, and a cup and a half of whole milk, and as I stir, I'm scraping the bottom of the pot to kind of get those delicious, tasty bits off. So whenever you're making something that uses a roux and you're adding a liquid in, it's better to add it in slowly as you mix. It gives it a better chance of being the silkiest with no lumps. So I drizzled both in as I was mixing. I'm getting this clam chowder started with one and a half teaspoons of salt. We might add more later to taste. There we go. And a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. I'm gonna cook this for about two minutes or until it starts to thicken. My soup's come to a simmer and it's started to thicken, so now I'm gonna add in my potatoes as well as one bay leaf. Add those potatoes in. We want this mixture to come to a boil. Once that does, reduce to a simmer. Keep an eye on this, by the way, because if you walked away and this was at a full boil, chances are it would have broken and you'd have like little granules of like milk solids hanging around. It wouldn't have that lovely, velvety texture we want. My soup has come to a boil. Reduce to simmer. We're gonna simmer this until the potatoes are tender. That'll be about 15 minutes. And let me tell you, one of the things I love about this soup is it is so hearty that it is like the most lovely hug on a cold day, but it's really quick and easy to make. So fast. If you wanted to like cut your onions and your celery and have your garlic all prepped out in the morning, you could even cook your bacon, set it aside, and just let the bacon grease cool down in the pot and then come back to it in the afternoon when you wanna make the dinner. Like any other soup, this is better the next day. So you could make this in advance or have it over the course of a few days and just gently warm it up when you're ready to serve. You do not wanna use high heat to warm this because that'll cause your clams to be like hard and tough. And there are different types of clam chowder. Today is, of course, a lovely New England clam chowder, my favorite, and not just because I live in Connecticut. Another very popular variety would be a New York style clam chowder, which has tomato in it and it's gonna be red. It's been about 15 minutes and I'm gonna grab a bigger chunk of potato that I can find. Really nice and soft, delicious too. It's time to stir in a cup and a half of half and half. If you wanted to use cream, you could use cream, but it really doesn't need it. The potatoes are so silky and the starch is doing a lot of work. I'm also gonna stir in my clams and this is the important part. You do not want to overcook your clams. They're already cooked. You're just warming them through and it's ready to serve. All right, stir that in and we can remove that bay leaf. This just needs to warm through. So while that's happening, give it a taste. I like that saltiness level. If you want a little bit more, add a little bit more in. If you wanna use fresh clams for this, you'll need a cup of fresh steamed clams as well as a cup of clam juice. And you'll follow the recipe just like it is, but using those fresh ingredients. And if you want your clam chowder to have a little bit of a kick, go ahead and add some hot sauce in or some finely chopped jalapeno. Once warmed through, remove it from heat and we're gonna transfer this to bowls, garnish and serve. Ladle your soup out. If you have leftovers, this could be refrigerated once cooled for up to five days. Creamy, silky, I love, love, love, love the soup. Garnish your soup with some chopped parsley and a bit of crumbled bacon. And just like that, it's ready to enjoy. Silky, creamy, hearty, full of flavor. And I gotta say, I love the crumbled bacon on top. It really makes it. I hope you get a chance to make this delicious, cozy recipe and if you like my videos, hit that subscribe button and check out my soup playlist.