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Cooking Tip
Learn how to make a basic chowder!
Just check out our How to Make Chowder page and you'll be on your way to making the best tasting chowders ever! |
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All About Chowder Soups
Soup History and Recipes
Did you ever want to find out more about Chowder Soups and how they all got started? Keep reading!
Chowder typically a rich and creamy soup full of chunks of ingredients that almost make it like a stew. The ingredients usually include seafood, vegetables and cream.
Traditionally made chowder has a base of bacon and is thickened up with crackers that have been broken into the base. Today, there are all kinds of variations using everything from seafood and poultry, to just using vegetables like a Creamy Corn Chowder.
The most famous chowders are found here in the United States. And the MOST famous one would be Clam Chowder! There are two styles of clam chowder. One is called New England style clam chowder and uses a base of cream. The other popular version of clam chowder is called Manhattan style clam chowder and it uses a base of pureed tomatoes. Both are delicious and both have a hearty and warm flavor.
The seafaring communities developed slightly different flavors of chowders. The local fishermen would throw samples of their catches into a large cauldron or pot and boil the chunks of fish with all kinds of vegetables and potatoes. France calls this chowder soup "Chaudiere" - which is the name of the pot it is cooked in. The French also liked to throw in smashed crackers and biscuits to make the soup thicken into a stew-like consistency.
Americans adopted this seafood stew from the French settlers in the Northern colonies. "Chaudiere" eventually became "Chowder" to Americans and the first known and written recipe used that name for it's header in 1751. We know, however, that the recipe was very popular long before this first written recipe. The British made their form of the seafood stew for many years before it became popular in the United States.
The American Chowder soups included onions, bacon, fish, all kinds of spices, crackers or biscuits, claret and water and are often mistaken for bisque soups. But there is a difference between chowders and bisques. To find out more about the difference between the two, visit our Bisque Soups page.
In the 1800's American cooks started to make the transition to using clams in their recipes - mostly because of the abundance of shell fish found in the New Colonies. Cooks began experimenting and adding cream to the chowders. They then began to differentiate different and unique types of chowder based on the ingredients used. Thus, other types of chowders appeared such as the above mentioned Corn Chowder or Sausage Bean Chowder or Beef Chowder.
Therefore, Chowder doesn't always have to include seafood. It's believed that all kinds of vegetable or meat chowders came into existence because the cook was just using up whatever ingredients he or she had lying around the kitchen.
by now you know that chowder comes in many flavors and is generally loved by all. Try some of the recipes I have listed below. And if you want to know exactly how to make chowder soups, go to my How to Make Chowder page.
For more great soup ideas, check out some more easy soup appetizer recipes or follow the links below.
Try some of these delicious chowder soups:
Chicken Asparagus Chowder
Corn Chowder
Creamy Clam Chowder
Maine Shrimp Chowder
Mushroom Scallop Chowder
Lobster Chowder
For a more complete listing of soup recipe ideas, visit my Soup Recipe Index page.
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