How to Make Clam Chowder by Chef Robert Del Grande

welcome to the RDG kitchen and today I have some fun for you a very iconic American soup the clam chatter great history in America you know it goes all the way back I remember in Melville's Moby Dick Ismael and his Harpoon friend go to have dinner where at a chowder house and they I think they're offered Cod chow or clam Chow my favorite chapter when they just kind of ate these big steaming bowls of clam Chow so clam chatter has a long history all over the world everyone sort of makes one and they're sort of the big family of fish soups anyway and I think here in the in America we tend to talk about two types Manhattan clam chat usually with a tomato e broth or the New England one around n Tucket and so forth which with the creamy one that's the one I'll make today CU it's the one I think we're most familiar with and I really love it it's a very simple soup to make um not very difficult at all and it's just a great dish so it starts believe it or not with clams that's where you start I have some nice little little neck clams here that uh are the most tender and sweet only thing you have to remember is that all the shells should be firmly closed so they're still they're still alive and fresh inside and we're just going to put them in a pot and steam them and I always think my rule with clams be generous put a lot of them put a lot of clams so we're going to load the pot up with clam so we want to steam the clams to steam them open um and steam is the proper word we don't want to boil them so we really just want to put enough broth in to generate some steam from them to open so maybe a quarter of the way up or so you could always add more liquid later if you need it we just want to be sure it doesn't boil dry but enough steam to get them to open because when they open up they're going to release all that Fresh Ocean sort of scent that comes with clams it really makes it really really wonderful so you can use clam stock or fish stock or even a little bit of chicken stock because the clam flavor will sort of IDE to the whole thing you get that wonderful scent of the the ocean really really beautiful so we're going to bring that broth to a boil so that the clams above it Steam and we just steam them long enough until they open up that's how we know they're done as soon as they start to open and usually all open at once you'll catch a couple stubborn ones in there that you have to tap or fidget with the knife but they will eventually open and the juice will go into the broth and we'll have beautifully tender steamed clams and steaming clams usually doesn't take too long once the liquid boils to generate that steam Vapor it's so 5 minutes or so maybe 10 at the most but I usually keep it close them because as soon as they open up we want to keep them very delicate plump and tender so while those clams are steaming we'll make basically the base for the soup which is kind of a little potato stew a little potato soup that's going to be flavored by the clams so I usually start with a little bit of chopped garlic that will add into a pot and then a little bit of of chopped onion and I'm sure this is the way they did it along the wars in the old days they just knew how much to put usually by color a little bit of carrot in there so it kind of looks nice you put a little bit of chopped celery in it as well all of it's going to flavor the flavor the soup and I'm sure it's what they had on on hand and a little bit of bacon sometimes use smoked ham if you like a Bacon's going to kind of give it a little bit of a smoky smoky flavor and then to that we'll add a little bit of butter to it cuz we're going to sauté all this together just to bring the flavor out a little bit so you can see it's starting to steam and some of these clams are just starting to pry open a little bit just as it starts to come to the steam see just starting to pop open that tells you that they're kind of on on their way you see how these clams are starting to open up see those clams are opening there now even sometimes when they get get a little bit stubborn if you just give a little tug they'll pop right open doesn't take very long to cook them so we're just going to sauté these a little bit in that butter just to kind of bring the flavor [Music] out kind of partially they steam they partially sauté so then I'll cut the potatoes and this is very simple we're just going to cut them into into little little cubes um the key to the potatoes are you want to keep some of them in there for texture but you also want to have some of them sort of dissolve a little bit to help thicken the soup so I usually cut them kind of irregular so no two potatoes are exactly the same some will dissolve into the soup some will be soft some will be little chunks of chunks of potato I always think of clam chowder as more of a a clam stew instead of just a soup that has lots of texture to it cuz really it's a can be a whole meal in itself so for this soup I sort of prefer the the yellow potato a little more waxy potato as opposed to the starchy Idaho Potato makes the soup a little creamier and a little bit richer it's a little more of a buttery buttery potato so then as have nicely sauteed and just kind of became translucent we're going to add in our potatoes it's going to be wonderful this will help thicken the soup so we'll stir those in just to kind of lightly lightly coat them and then we'll add the broth that we steamed our clams in become sort of the body of the soup and you can see it almost looks like a little potato is stew there and we're going to heat this up and let them cook just so those potatoes begin to dissolve a little bit and thicken the soup so we're going to bring this to to a simmer and just very slowly cook it so the potatoes are very very tender and just start to dissolve uh but still leave the vegetables have a little bit of bite to them so the good part about a clam chatter is that when one part is cooking you can work on the next step so first we steamed the clams and while that was steaming we prepared the vegetables for the soup and the potatoes and now while the potatoes and the vegetables are cooking with the clam broth we can now take the clams out of the shell and we're ready finish doing that the super Lo be done and then we're ready to eat and that's what we're all waiting for so I'm just going to take all these clams out of the out of the shell what I usually do is I usually kind of sometimes pick a couple nice big plump ones that we can use as a garnish just hold a couple of them back to have that real authentic look of some clams floating in the soup with the rest I'm going to take out of the [Music] shell and we're going to add these back to the soup at the last minute and let them finish s of simmering in the in the soup sometimes the plns even fall out into the bowl they come out of the shell for free but this is why I say you got to start with a lot of clams because they're so good and they're quite little inside so you need enough to sort of fill that bowl up with with clams there we go nice bowl of clams save the juice so we have the clam chatter now the potatoes are just starting to fall apart they're nice and tender this is the point where I'm going to add the clams back to the soup to kind of enrich it a little bit let them simmer and then usually going to add a little milk or add a little bit of cream towards the end just to kind of flush the soup out so it's a nice nice color nice white color and that'll those flavors will bind with the clams and with the potatoes beautiful soup we'll just let it simmer for a little bit bring the flavors together and then it's ready to serve all right we let that sim a little bit I think we're ready to go the soup is really beautiful got to spoon it in here to a bowl beautiful chunks of potato lovely lots of clams plenty of clams it's like as I said it's like a little clam stew all sitting there and that's why I say it's really sort of a main course and then here we could even just garnish with a little clams to kind of bring bring the full fisherman look to it and then we put a little bit of kind of little parsy FL I think it's a wonderful soup we serve a number of different ways we actually make uh homemade crackers here so if you like a cracker we put the little cracker with the soup so I really think it's a fabulous one course meal and so fabulous I think we'll do it at the RDG neighborhood lunch for the usual $10 for delicious clam chowder hope you come and see us that's

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Id: 5vGJbEGFgeg

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2012