12-10-2014, 03:06 PM
[#0000FF]The beauty of chowders (besides tasting good) is that the recipes are infinitely flexible. You really don't need to follow an exact recipe and you can add, delete or modify ingredients to suit your own tastes or whatever you have available.
I first learned how to make my chowder from an old galley guy on one of the fishing boats I worked on in Southern California. He always kept some canned soups, bacon, potatoes, onions and other goodies on hand. And whenever we had access to some good white-fleshed fish he whomped up a batch of chowder.
I definitely agree that making up a good homemade soup base is esthetically more pleasing than opening a can of soup. But this recipe is something that almost anybody can put together without a culinary background.
I like celery in my chowder but my wife doesn't, so I usually leave it out. In truth, you could add a lot more chopped veggies but then you get more into the "Manhattan" style chowder than the "New England" style I prefer.
One thing I sometimes do to "kick it up a notch" is to add either some chopped shrimp and/or some shrimp bouillon. That adds more of a salt water twang to it than using plain old perch or white bass.
And everybody has their own fave spices and flavorings. Almost anything will work...in moderation. I know quite a few guys who have started with my basic recipe and have modified it to suit their own preferences. And they're all good.
Never tried making it with halibut. But I'm sure it would be delectable. Long since finished up the halibut I brought back from our trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands a couple of years ago.
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I first learned how to make my chowder from an old galley guy on one of the fishing boats I worked on in Southern California. He always kept some canned soups, bacon, potatoes, onions and other goodies on hand. And whenever we had access to some good white-fleshed fish he whomped up a batch of chowder.
I definitely agree that making up a good homemade soup base is esthetically more pleasing than opening a can of soup. But this recipe is something that almost anybody can put together without a culinary background.
I like celery in my chowder but my wife doesn't, so I usually leave it out. In truth, you could add a lot more chopped veggies but then you get more into the "Manhattan" style chowder than the "New England" style I prefer.
One thing I sometimes do to "kick it up a notch" is to add either some chopped shrimp and/or some shrimp bouillon. That adds more of a salt water twang to it than using plain old perch or white bass.
And everybody has their own fave spices and flavorings. Almost anything will work...in moderation. I know quite a few guys who have started with my basic recipe and have modified it to suit their own preferences. And they're all good.
Never tried making it with halibut. But I'm sure it would be delectable. Long since finished up the halibut I brought back from our trip to the Queen Charlotte Islands a couple of years ago.
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