It’s only July in Brisbane, but it’s been getting freezing lately, and nothing beats having a beautiful bowl of warm creamy soup on a Winter night. Clam chowder is actually a simple soup to prepare with a few pantry staples like potatoes, carrots, onion and herbs. This recipe is flexible that you can substitute ingredients as you please. For example, take out the seafood marina mix and prawns with salmon and kingfish pieces or add more bacon! You can easily tweak how creamy or runny your soup is by adjusting the water/cream ratio. My recipe is 1:1.5 as I prefer it more creamy.
Video Tutorial
Here’s the tutorial. As my new studio light hasn’t arrived yet, I just used natural day light came through my patio as I filmed (not perfect I know), sharing our Winter sun to you 🙂
About the Recipe
About the clams, I use Goolwa pipis for this recipe, and I LOVE it (it is not a sponsored ad). When I trialled this recipe for the first time, I used a packet of pre-cooked clams from a local seafood shop which had a ton of sand in them.
The second trial, I bought a packet of Goolwa pipis from Woolworth and they are perfectly clear with a very smooth texture. Reading from their website, Goolwa Pipico immerses pipis into their specially designed seawater tanks with clean water, so the clams will spit out the sand. Just like how you will clean fresh clams! Remember to save those lovely clam juice as you open the packet, it’s the magic ingredient to this recipe! Remember I said this recipe is very flexible in the beginning? The only thing you can’t really leave out is the clam juice. It makes a lot of difference 🙂
Creating a hearty, full-bodied winter soup requires the same secret ingredient: starch. For this recipe, I used crisp bread as the thickening agent as suggested by a friend. I crushed them quite fine and it worked out well. And you can always serve them along with the soup too!
Now, you may notice that I didn’t put any salt into the soup, because to me the clam juice has enough salty flavour in it for you. However, if you prefer, you can substitute water with chicken stock/fish stock (light flavour stock) for added flavour.
Tarragon’s subtle anise flavour compliments seafood very well, just be mindful not to use too much as it could become overwhelming.
My Other Recipes
Creamy Seafood Clam Chowder
Ingredients
- 300 g Potatoes Diced
- 120 g Bacon Diced
- 1 Carrot Diced
- 1 Onion Diced
- 4 gloves Galic Chopped
- 150 g Seafood Marina Mix
- 100 g Raw Frozen Prawns
- 500 g Cooked Mussels
- 400 g Cooked Pipis
- 2 packets Cripsbread
- 600 ml Thicken Cream
- 200 ml Clam Juice
- 200 ml Water
- 3 tbsp Tarragon Chopped
- 1 tsp Dried Thyme
- 1 tsp Paparika
- Parsley To decorate
Instructions
- Heat a large stockpot over medium high heat. Add bacon and cook until brown and crispy. Transfer to a paper towel-lined plate, set aside.
- Add oil into the stockpot. Add garlic and onion, and cook, stir frequently. When onions are caramelised (they look translucent, usually takes about 3-4 minutes), add in thyme, stir well.
- Add carrots, stir well and cook for about 2-3 minutes. Add in fine crushed crispbread, stir well. Add in clam juice and paprika, let it simmer for 2-3minutes as it thickens.
- Add in water, bring to simmer. Add in cream and potatoes. Reduce heat to low for 15 mins, until potatoes become tender.
- Add in seafood marina mix, prawns and cook for 3-5 minutes until cooked. Add in tarragon, clams and mussels.
- Sprinkle the bacon and parsley to serve.
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