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Ritual and tradition are powerful forces, both for good and for ill. Such it is with me and this salmon chowder.
I grew up eating chowder, all sorts of chowder, really, but my mom’s is the best. It is a brothy, Maine-style clam chowder that is always made from the same ingredients. always in the same way. Any deviation is apostasy.
Needless to say I developed a taste for that sort of chowder, no matter if it’s made with clams or fish or whatever. Sure, I like Manhattan “clam chowder,” but I view it as more of a perfectly nice clam soup than a proper chowder. There is also a Rhode Island style chowder with no tomato or dairy — also a lovely soup, but not a chowder.
There is, however, one incarnation of chowder I loathe: It is that hideous, gloppy monstrosity a particular set of New Englanders are known to concoct, mostly I suspect for Midwestern tourists. And I say “Midwestern” because I recently had a version of this chowder in Minnesota that was so thick you could stand a spoon in it.
My first tentative steps to break from tradition came with a perch chowder I designed specifically for the Great Lakes region. It’s made with yellow perch and Polish kielbasa and is damn good if I say so myself. This salmon chowder is my second step.
To me, chowder is different from soup in that it contains dairy products, in most cases cream or whole milk. Some are thickened with a butter-and-flour roux; mine are generally not. If you choose to thicken your salmon chowder with a roux, use equal weights of butter and flour; weight is a better way to do this than tablespoons. I’d suggest an ounce and an ounce. (If you insist on tablespoons, it’s about 2 tablespoons butter and roughly 3 tablespoons flour.)
I should start by saying that what you see in the picture is not, strictly speaking, a salmon chowder: It’s made with a steelhead trout. Steelhead is very close to salmon, although it is a little leaner and a lot paler (unless you are working with pink salmon, which is the same color). Any salmon, char or trout you feel like using will work here.
I live in Northern California, where the chinook salmon is king. This is the very southern end of its range, and what, ecologically speaking, could be called the Pacific Northwest — and it is the Pacific Northwest, with its vast salmon runs, trout in the mountains, steelhead in the rivers and char in the snowy North — where I drew my inspiration here.
So my salmon chowder has a salmon stock, bacon, corn, lots of herbs and a homemade stock. None of this would fly in mum’s clam chowder. I’ve even added chanterelle mushrooms, and it was a great choice; if you want to do that, add about 1 cup chopped or torn chanties.
Here’s the thing: People move West to escape tradition, to be free to be whomever they wish to be. Why can’t their chowder follow suit?
Salmon Chowder
Ingredients
SALMON BROTH
- 3 to 4 pounds salmon heads, fins and bones , gills removed
- Salt
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 handful of dried mushrooms, preferably matsutake
- 2 bay leaves
CHOWDER
- 1/4 pound thick bacon
- 1 cup chopped yellow or white onion
- 2 celery stalks, chopped
- 1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and diced
- 5 tp 6 cups fish broth, or 4 cups chicken broth plus 1 to 2 cups water
- 1 to 2 pounds skinless, boneless salmon meat, cut into chunks
- 1 cup corn, fresh or thawed
- 2/3 cup heavy cream
- Black pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons chopped fresh dill or chives, for garnish
Instructions
- To make the broth, put all the broth ingredients into the pot and cover with water. Bring to a bare simmer, or even just let it steep like a tea, for 30 to 45 minutes. Strain the broth. Pick any stray salmon meat you want off the bones and reserve. Discard the rest of the solids and reserve the broth.
- Wipe out the pot, add the bacon, and turn the heat to medium, and cook the bacon until crispy. Remove the bacon. Eat 1 piece. Chop the rest and reserve.
- Sauté the onion and celery in the bacon fat, stirring often, until they are soft, about 4 to 5 minutes. Add the potatoes and the salmon broth and bring to a simmer. Add salt to taste. Cook until the potatoes are tender, about 15 to 20 minutes.
- When the potatoes are tender, add the corn and the chunks of salmon. Cook gently until the salmon is just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped bacon, dill, heavy cream and black pepper.
Video
Notes
Keys to Success
- Don't get all low fat on me and sub in milk for the cream. The chowder can break and curdle. Ew.Â
- If you want, skip the bacon and use olive oil. I won't mind.Â
- Any dried mushrooms will do for the broth, not just matsutake.
- In a perfect world, you would use meat from the head and collars for this chowder, because they are fattier and nicer and won't dry out. Regular fillet meat is fine though.Â
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Hank:
Do you have any advice about using smoked salmon. Since cooking with smoked salmon sometimes accentuates the smoke flavor….I’m thinking 1/2 smoked salmon and 1/2 unsmoked.
I’m in Alaska and we normally eat our salmon fresh in the summer months and smoke and freeze our winter supply. So, I don’t have any unsmoked salmon. Would it be an abomination to substitute canned salmon? If yes, I may be able to find some frozen salmon in a neighbor’s freezer but it will probably be filleted.
Thanks
Paul
Paul: I’d use frozen over fresh, but canned might work. I’ve never done it.
Any subs for the cream? Trying to make a lactose-intolerant friendly version. Maybe cashew cream??
Maren: I dunno. I’d just leave the cream out.
I saved this recipe a few months ago and I’ve really been looking forward to trying it. Today is the day! But halfway through the recipe I came across this instruction:
“Let the wine boil for a minute or two, then add the remaining ingredients”
However, the only remaining ingredients listed are the ones used to make the chowder once the stock is finished.
Should I just disregard that instruction and just add water and the salmon bits?
Good catch! Yes, just add water and salmon bits. I altered the recipe to make it clearer. Hope the update helps!
Great recipe. It definitely is not a thick chowder, but very good nonetheless. I actually used lake trout caught from Keuka Lake NY. I will use this again….thanks
I had a few pieces of salmon that were sealed and frozen that I was unsure of what to do with. I really did not want to BBQ them and a buddy turned me on to this recipe. A couple months ago I had a half dozen lobsters and I made a stock out of the remainders after the meal:
https://fishcooking.about.com/od/soupsstewsstocks/r/lobster_stock.htm
Needless to say, this is the best soup that I have ever made. Easy to follow directions and was quick and very tasty. I have no doubt that the stock recipe given in this Salmon Chowder recipe would be great, but the extra flavor of the lobster nailed it. Thanks, I will be making this again real soon.
This looks amazing. The end.
Thanks for posting this recipe. My husband and I live in Michigan and salmon fish all summer long. I’m always looking for a new way to cook salmon/ steelhead/ trout. Your chowder recipe is very close to one that I came up with, except I use sweet potatoes in mine because my husband is allergic to regular potatoes. They work well as long as you don’t cook them too long….
Made this recipe tonight. It was fantastic. My girlfriend crumbled crackers into hers but I liked the chowder straight on. A little bread, salad and some Gewürztraminer and it was a little seafood heaven! Thanks again, Hank, for such a great recipe!
Bacon, wine, cream, but not thick. Yep, that’s how we roll in Seattle! (Except Ivar’s, gloppy and thick… ugh.) And now I am craving chowder, thanks Hank. I usually wing together something like this with razor clams and oysters when we come back from a dig, but it works fantastically with salmon scraps during the summer runs (I like to use the leftover meat on the spine after filleting, plus a few tail-end chunks of fillet). Not boiling the head is key, I put a thermometer in it and keep it at about 190.
Time to go defrost some clam feet…
I’m definitely trying this and will inevitably try some other fish concoctions. I have to say, I think I am the ONLY person in New England who enjoys both thinner and thicker chowders. I have never had a chowder so thick you could stand a spoon in it, but chowder is chowder, not soup (in reply to whoever wrote that it is soup). I like it to be somewhat like bisque or even possibly a little thicker, but this looks perfect for a thinner chowder. I also don’t think I’d ever order chowder in the mid-west.. I think of that as being a more German/Scandinavian cuisine part of the country.
How excited am I right now? My husband is always catching trout and now I have a use for the parts he dumps. So much better to use it for stock and have less waste. I’m more grateful with every post of yours to have found your site a few months back b/c I’ve found so many great recipes. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks Hank!
Sarah: Yes, you can, but it will not be as good — no collagen from the bones. Use about 1 1/2 pounds max. Honestly, though, I might just use chicken broth.
Erika: Exactly. Leaving the gills in both clouds the stock and makes it bitter.
Sara: Those foods are all inherently chewy. Octopus needs LOOONG cooking, i.e., 2+ hours, while squid needs only 30 seconds. Clams will always be chewy, but they can cook for up to 5 minutes or so. Scallops should be dropped in right before you serve.
Robert: Yep, go with any of those — the key is firmness. Yellow perch is ideal, but any firm fish will work.
Anthony: Ideally, yes.
When you say it can be reheated the next day slowly. Would you leave the heavy cream and dill out if you plan to reheat the next day?
Hank – for those of us who are landlocked in the south – when you say “any fish” (other than the few you mention) – does that transalate to our readily available game fish? Largemouth bass? crappie? Thanks.
I know this is slightly off topic but I don’t know where else to ask. When making seafood soups – how do you not make the seafood rubbery? We make a mixed seafood bits soup and it almost always is difficult to chew. The mix comes frozen so it might be the product but it has scallops, clams, squid/octopus, and other “bits”. We’ve tried adding the fish at the very end of the cooking so they are just cooked but they are still like hitting bits of rubber.
This looks much, much better than those other gloppy chowders you describe. Have to try this with some of the citrus salts I’ve got halfway mixed in place of the dill. Oh, and thanks for the fish stock technique. I’ve never ventured there…
Why is it so important to ensure that the gills are removed from the heads for stock? Cloudy stock? Funky taste? Thanks!
Your revulsion in re: too thick chowder mirrors my own feelings about too-thick gumbos. It’s soup, dammit!
Can I just use extra salmon meat to make the broth? My husband caught a bunch of salmon over the summer, but he filleted it all and we have it sealed and frozen….so no heads, fins or bones. If not, is there somewhere to purchase salmon broth, or is there a good substitute? Thanks!