After a cold and rainy couple of months up here in the Northeast summer is finally in full swing. Ever since the weather has gotten hot and humid I’ve been craving some clam chowder. It’s nothing that I’ve tried to make before, but I was intrigued. I’ve had many a delicious chowder in my day, so I really wanted to try my hand at making my own piping hot vat of the creamy stuff.
After looking through a bunch of recipes I picked Tyler Florence’s. He’s almost always reliable, and he didn’t disappoint this time either. The end product was delicious: just the right thickness, chock full of flavor and packed with clams. The addition of littlenecks at the very end, shell and all, made for a nice presentation too. There was quite a bit of work to get to the final product, but trust me when I say that it was worth it.
The recipe uses fresh clams, no cans here. As such, there are a few more steps, like steaming, cleaning and chopping the little suckers. I have to say though, that the homemade clam broth was delicious. With all the fresh thyme and garlic, it made for an amazing base to the soup, but make sure that you strain it well to get all the sand out of it. I think it even would have made a delicious Rhode Island Clam Chowder (without any cream). However, the cream and milk made it luxurious and rich.
I made a couple small tweaks to the recipe to reflect some of my favorite chowders. First, instead of using two potatoes, I substituted one of them with a sweet potato. This is a little trick I picked up from one of my favorite restaurants and it adds something different and really tasty to the chowder. Secondly, I added a bunch of fresh thyme directly into the finished chowder. There was already a nice undertone of thyme because it was used in the broth, but I’ve found that thyme really works extremely well in clam chowder, so I added more in at the end and it was a good decision.
In Newport, Rhode Island it’s traditional to add dill to the chowder. If that’s your thing you could definitely do that with this recipe. They do it at The Black Pearl, and they have some of the best chowder that I’ve ever tasted. The batch I made this weekend, though? It was pretty close.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Aug 20, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Sweet potato in clam chowder, really? I’ll trust you, because this article just made my mouth water. Will have to give this recipe a shot sometime – thanks for the inspiration.