New England Clam Chowder

[DonRocks]

I'll agree with the clam chowder - it is a pretty good rendition. But a lot of the rest of the menu is just......executed not so well.

I have a hunch that making good-tasting New England Clam Chowder is not difficult at all. There are just too many mediocre restaurants that make pretty good milk-based chowders. Do any cooks have an opinion on this?

Funny that we're talking about New England Clam Chowder at Grand Central's Oyster Bar; as opposed to Manhattan Clam Chowder which I very rarely enjoy - it's often too hot, too thin, under-seasoned, and reliant on canned tomatoes for its primary flavor instead of clams, thus tasting of diner-quality vegetable soup, although diner-quality vegetable soup is often over-salted (probably because it's canned).

[The Hersch]

I have a hunch that making good-tasting New England Clam Chowder is not difficult at all. There are just too many mediocre restaurants that make pretty good milk-based chowders. Do any cooks have an opinion on this?

Funny that we're talking about New England Clam Chowder at Grand Central's Oyster Bar; as opposed to Manhattan Clam Chowder which I very rarely enjoy - it's often too hot, too thin, under-seasoned, and reliant on canned tomatoes for its primary flavor instead of clams, thus tasting of diner-quality vegetable soup, although diner-quality vegetable soup is often over-salted (probably because it's canned).

I'm reminded of this cartoon by Danny Shanahan, which appeared in the New Yorker.

As to your question about the difficulty or otherwise of making New England clam chowder, your hunch is correct. All you need is good ingredients and the will to avoid thickening the chowder with flour.

[zoramargolis]

my late mother-in-law's secret for thickening NE clam chowder--instant mashed potatoes.

[Rhone1998]

my late mother-in-law's secret for thickening NE clam chowder--instant mashed potatoes.

Another method I've used--I think it came from Alton Brown-- is just stick an immersion blender in your pot for a moment or two (before you add the clams, if course). It will blend some of your cubed potatos, thickening the soup, while leaving the rest whole.

[DonRocks]

Another method I've used--I think it came from Alton Brown-- is just stick an immersion blender in your pot for a moment or two (before you add the clams, if course). It will blend some of your cubed potatos, thickening the soup, while leaving the rest whole.

These seems less disgusting to me.  (That said, I grew up on instant mashed potatoes.)

Maybe you could hold back some of the cubed potatoes until after this?

[Pat]

These seems less disgusting to me.  (That said, I grew up on instant mashed potatoes.)

You don't taste the instant mashed potatoes taste when they're used as an extender or thickener.

[DonRocks]

You don't taste the instant mashed potatoes taste when they're used as an extender or thickener.  

A Ghost Story

[Pat]

A Ghost Story

Instant mashed potatoes aren't really designed to fool anyone.  They're just dehydrated potatoes, potatoes in another form.  When that's all there is in a dish, they have a hyper-concentrated flavor that's distinctive, but when used in small amounts as an addition to something else, they just work as a thickening starch.

[zoramargolis]

I wasn't suggesting that it was good. My late MIL wouldn't cook tomato sauce because it stained the sink when the pot got washed. She disliked mustard, vinegar or anything spicy, the only fresh herb ever used was parsley, and she wouldn't ever have fresh garlic in the house, just used a brief shake of garlic salt occasionally. When I visited I did the cooking for the most part, and would grocery shop before I came. One day, I was looking around for the head of garlic I had brought and left on the counter. She had double wrapped it in aluminum foil and plastic wrap and stuck it at the bottom of the vegetable drawer, fearing that it would stink up the kitchen, just sitting out. This is how I came to understand why J., to this day, loves food that is creamed and cheesy (like macaroni or cauliflower in cheese sauce), or crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, in other words, most anything fried. Those were the best things he ate when he was growing up. He was very young when we met, and amenable to having his palate expanded dramatically, and he enjoys many tastes and foods that his mother would never have eaten let alone cooked. But the flavors of childhood exert a powerful emotional pull.

[The Hersch]

I've been puzzled for a long, long time by the impulse to thicken chowder. Some of the chowders you'll find in New England come to the table so revoltingly thickened that a spoon will stand up in them. (These chowders have probably all been voted number one! in some poll or other.) If you must thicken a chowder, then partially pureeing the soup before adding the clams is probably the least offensive way to do it.

Occasionally, you'll stumble across a wonderful New England chowder in New England. I wish I could remember the name of the place, but I remember about thirty years ago tasting an all-but-perfect, not-at-all-thickened, chowder at a modest joint in Provincetown (a town that abounds in bad food,or did back then, including especially the library-paste version of clam chowder). I posted elsewhere here not long ago about the seafood chowder at the Harbor Gawker in Vinalhaven, Maine, which I would eat once a week if I could.

the only fresh herb ever used was parsley

I don't know what time and place Zora is referring to here, but when I was a lad in Northern Virginia in the 1960s, curly parsley was generally the only fresh herb to be found in supermarkets (and there weren't any farmers' markets).

[DonRocks]

I've been puzzled for a long, long time by the impulse to thicken chowder. Some of the chowders you'll find in New England come to the table so revoltingly thickened that a spoon will stand up in them. (These chowders have probably all been voted number one! in some poll or other.) 

I think it's the same thing with Hot & Sour Soup in Chinese restaurants. The thicker they are, the more viscosity they have, the more pronounced the tactile presence is (doesn't that make me sound educated and culinary?), and the heartier they seem. Jeff Heineman was a vocal advocate about not thickening his chowders at Freddy's Lobster and Clams. I personally like a good, thick soup on a cold winter day; I just don't always like how they acquire that thickness.

[zoramargolis]

Oyster stew and lobster stew are not typically thickened in the kitchen--traditionally, seafood stews and chowders were eaten with dry crackers (called store or common crackers) crumbled and submerged in them, which provided the thickening that flour, starch or pureed potatoes are now used for.