Fish chowder

[JCGrill]

This is not really a BBQ recipe, although I suppose you could use homemade bacon. It is my favorite personally developed recipe though. I imagine it is a lot like other recipes, but I take credit for this one. I use walleye for my fish because that's what I fish for.
INGREDIENTS

• 8 slices Bacon
• 1 whole Onion; chopped
• 2 stalks Celery; chopped fine
• 2 whole Carrots; large dice
• 1 stick Butter
• 1 tablespoon Thyme; chopped fine
• 1 whole Bay leaf
• 1 1/2 teaspoons Paprika
• 1 tablespoon Balsamic Vinegar
• 1 cup All purpose flour
• 1 pound Red potatoes; 1 inch cubes, skins on
• 2 cups Fish stock
• 1 cup Heavy cream
• 4 cups Milk
• 1 cup Water
• 1 can whole kernel corn; drained
• 4 tablespoons Fresh parsley; chopped fine
• 1 1/2 pounds fish fillets; 1 inch cubes

In large stock pot, cook bacon over moderate heat until crisp. Remove the bacon from the pan, pat dry, and cut into small pieces. Drain the bacon grease from the stock pot and melt the butter in the same pot. Stir in the onion, carrots, celery, thyme, and bay leaf. Saute the vegetables until the onions are translucent. Add the vinegar. Slowly stir in the flour and cook 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the paprika and cook 30 additional seconds. Pour in the fish stock, milk, cream, and water, stirring until the flour dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for roughly 12 minutes, until the potatoes are tender. Add the corn, parsley, and fish chunks, and simmer until the fish is cooked through, which will take roughly 5 minutes. Stir in the bacon and salt and pepper to taste (I like a lot of black pepper). Serve. Makes about 3 quarts of chowder.

[EdF]

Awesome!

[smokenoob]

Thanks for that! It’s on my to-cook list!

[Spinaker]

Awesome. I love chowder. Thanks for sharing this with us!

[Huskee]

Sure sounds good. I rarely use fish for anything other than frying or grilling whole fillets, but I'd like to try this.

[JCGrill]

That's what I do too, but I get tired of fried fish and change it up sometimes.

[Pirate Scott]

Sounds Delicious! 48 Days Till Open Water Walleye/ Northern Pike Opens in NY.

[Troutman]

I too love a good chowder, especially clam. Just curious what type of fillets you used?

[HorseDoctor]

Could likely use about anything you have access to in this type recipe. White fleshed fish like walleye to halibut is great! Salmon too is awesome, quite different but still awesome! Then try smoked salmon or smoked halibut... It’s all great!!!

[texastweeter]

Troutman Walleye are in lake Caddo. Me and my Papaw used to catch them and then he would have me throw them back. He always told me that freshwater fish with teeth are no good to eat. We had no idea what they were back then. They are also in Black Cypress Bayou.

[Troutman]

I did not know that texastweeter. They must be snow birds !!!

[Skip]

That looks tasty JCGrill . Yum!

[Ant Rhonda]

Dear JC Grill,

I could hardly bear to read that you make chowder out of walleye! We only get it when we visit our relatives in the Midwest and then we're lucky to get our teeth in one.

Here's a way I make chowder. Our best bet for fish here in Central California is Trader Joe's frozen cod, much firmer than walleye -- if you try it you'd put the walleye chunks in at the very last (I'd let the mix heat almost to simmer, then turn the fire off and let it soak, myself.) I seldom have bacon so use a mixture of butter and mild olive oil to wilt and coat the vegetables. When fish is as much a treat as it is to us, we don't want to overpower it with anything anyway.

NOTE: I use organic potatoes and onions because they are firmer and less blown up with water. The best ones I've had for a long time were from Canada! I like the red-gold types for red potatoes because they are usually firmer. Red onions turn the chowder a funny color but it tastes good. I'm always racing rot with the reds, they're poor keepers and end up in things.

1. Dump some olive oil into a big heavy saucepan and warm it on low heat. Keep an eye on it while you dice onions and cut some good Amish roll butter into the oil and let it heat, but not too much. You want to just wilt the onions, not brown them (much).
Meanwhile, dice some onion. The easy way to do this is slice off the top, peel, cut a bit off the root, stand the onion on the root end and cut little squares into it, then slice the dice off the onion. When you start getting shreds and slices instead of dice, cut some more squares. (If you happen to have a processor with a French fry cutter, it makes great diced onion --).
Rather slowly, add the onion to the simmering fat. It should be hot enough to sizzle a bit -- the onion will cool it some. Shake the pan to coat all the little dices. Keep an eye on the pan while you peel and cut up potatoes.

2. Here's a chowder and stew secret I learned from Georgina Horley's "Good Food on a Budget" cookbook. Use red potatoes for potato and cut up a russet (baking) potato rather fine for thickening. I like fairly big chunks of potato -- bite-size for a rather big mouth -- halves longways, lay each half down and cut longways as many times as you want the chunks wide, then across. I can line up two halves' worth to cut crossways but no more -- your mileage may vary.
However, you can do this another way -- use all russets and cut one up fine and add it well before the other chunks.
Keep watching the onions and shaking the pan between cutting potatoes. If the temperature and size of the pan and amount of onion are right, they won't ooze juice -- not that it hurts much if they do. They'll definitely taste better if given this preliminary heating to transparency, though. When the onions look transparent, start adding potato chunks and shaking to coat them with oil. (This keeps them more intact.) I add the russet last, right before the liquid, on the theory that I don't want to coat it, I want it to mostly break up into the chowder. Grind pepper over the veg about now. I use part black pepper, part white, and some nutmeg from my handy nutmeg scraper (you won't know it's there unless you vastly overdo it, but it adds a depth).

Now you can either barely cover the veg mix with water and cover and simmer until almost cooked, then slowly add milk, or just slowly add milk and bring it to a simmer. When it's good and hot and even showing a tiny bubble or two, start adding the fish, slowly, so the liquid doesn't cool. Keep at a simmer for a while (my horrible GE gas stove boils everything but I've never had this curdle even when it's come to a mild boil. Don't ask me why not, seems like it should.) Cover the pan and let it stand for a while if you can, then heat gently to serve. This is even better the next day, not that there's often much left for next day. I ate four bowlsful before I even got it to the table, last week. (Now if we could only get real pilot biscuit...)

Proportions? Not crucial. There are only the two of us and I figure about three tennis ball sized red potatoes, one good-sized russet, a good sized onion or equivalent (i.e. what's left after I peel the icky outside off some reds), close to a cup. Enough fat to cover the bottom of the pan about 1/4 inch, which is a little deeper than you think. Fish and milk to fill the 2-quart pot with some freeboard.

(This is a variant of the family clam chowder recipe, for which I once won a really fine cookbook -- Barbara Kafka's "Soup." The only way to get a decent clam into chowder here is to steam so many there are some left over and cut up opened clams for the chowder. I'm going to try it with some pellet-grilled fish next time I find some nice big cod or haddock filets. And maybe that's a variant of my mother's rivelly soup, for which she won -- but I digress. The same ingredients make a great potato soup, too, especially if you use about half chicken broth and some really rich milk or part cream for the liquid.)

[texastweeter]

Use instant potato flakes instead of a russet. Works like a charm.

[JCGrill]

I get walleye way too much to fry it all the time, so I like options. Northern Pike is a great one to use in this recipe because it is firmer. Thanks for the post.

[smokenoob]

you had me at "bacon"

[texastweeter]

Gonna whip up a big batch of this with either crappie or sand bass the next time they start to run. I LOVE chowder. Bet it would do well with a handful of diced jalapenos in it too!