Hearty Seafood Chowder

This seafood chowder is a chunky, creamy soup with smoked fish and seafood. Perfect for a cosy dinner. My son doesn’t usually like soup, but he loves chowder! I make it more fun by giving the kids crackers to crumble on top; they like a bit of DIY at the dinner table. Crispy bacon bits to sprinkle over would also be yummy.

I sometimes make a chicken chowder using the same ingredients but replacing the fish with shredded cooked chicken.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp flour
300g potatoes, peeled and cubed (about 1cm size)
500ml fish or chicken stock
500ml milk
pinch of nutmeg
1-2 tbsp fresh or dried parsley
1-2 fillets of smoked haddock or cod
Mixed seafood and/or white fish and/or salmon (I used my supermarket deli’s ‘marinara mix’ most recently). The combined weight of all of the fish, smoked fish and seafood should be around 5-600g.
200g (half a tin) of sweetcorn kernels (you can use frozen or fresh if that’s what you prefer)
Salt and pepper, to taste

Method

1. Melt the butter in a large pan and add the flour, stirring for 1 minute.
2. Add the stock and the milk gradually, stirring well in between each addition.
3. Add the potatoes and simmer gently for 10 minutes, until the potato is almost completely cooked. You may need to add some water here if it’s getting a bit thick.
4. Meanwhile, skin the fish (if you need to) and cut into chunks. Add the fish, shellfish, sweetcorn, nutmeg and parsley to the pan, bring back to a gentle simmer and cook for about another 5 minutes. Take out a piece of fish and check it is opaque all the way through before serving. Season with salt and pepper if you think it needs it.
5. Serve with crusty bread or crackers to crumble on top.

Tips

You can increase the vegetables in this dish by sautéing finely chopped onion or leek, carrot and celery in the butter before you add the flour.

Adding the flour to the butter in step 1 makes a roux to thicken the soup. If you increase the amount of butter to 3 or 4 tbsp, the roux will be softer and it will be a lot easier to add the stock and milk without it going lumpy. A whisk is also handy for quick stirring if you’re worried about lumps.

I find that potato cooks much slower in thicker sauces/soups, so you will probably need to cook them for longer than you would if you were boiling them in water. To speed it up you could boil the potatoes in water or stock for 5 minutes first, skip step 3, and just add everything all together in step 4.

Leftovers will keep in the fridge for 2-3 days.

If you like soups, try my Tomato Soup recipe.