My love of seafood is one of the reasons I got into cooking,” Canadian celebrity chef and restauranteur Chuck Hughes shares in his new cookbook Chuck’s Home Cooking: Family-Favourite Recipes from My Kitchen to Yours. Hughes’ mother worked as a flight attendant for Quebecair, and often brought home whelks, shrimp, crab and lobster from trips Québec’s seafood-producing Gaspésie and Côte-Nord regions. “I’ve loved to cook and eat seafood ever since, and this chowder is one of our favourites today. It can be made with any seafood or leftover fish, and topping the thick, creamy chowder with homemade croutons makes this dish hard to beat,” Hughes writes.
Chuck Hughes' Seafood Chowder
Chuck Hughes' recipe for thick, creamy seafood chowder topped with homemade croutons.
Ingredients
Croutons
- 3 tbsp salted butter
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 4 cups torn bread
- 1 tbsp Old Bay seasoning
- kosher salt
- freshly cracked black pepper
Chowder
- 4 slices thick-cut bacon diced
- ½ cup water
- 3 tbsp salted butter
- 1 medium yellow onion diced
- 1 leek white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
- 3 stalks celery diced
- 3 garlic cloves minced
- 3 tbsp all-purpose flour
- 4 cups fish stock
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1 cup table 18% cream
- 1 can (10 oz/284 g) whole shelled baby clams drained and juice reserved
- 2 medium russet potatoes
- 11 oz (300 g) haddock cut into 2-inch cubes
- 7 oz (200 g) cooked snow crab meat picked over for bits of shell
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- ½ tsp freshly cracked black pepper
- 3 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
- Croutons for garnish
Instructions
Croutons
- Melt the butter in a large frying pan over medium-low heat. Once the butter begins to foam, add the olive oil and the bread. Sprinkle with the Old Bay seasoning, a bit of salt and a few cracks of pepper and toss everything together to coat the bread. Reduce the heat to low and toast the bread, stirring often, until it is golden brown and crunchy all over but still slightly soft in the middle, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer the croutons to a plate lined with paper towel and set aside.
Chowder
- Combine the bacon and water in a large pot and bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often. Once the water has completely evaporated, reduce the heat to medium and continue cooking the bacon until golden brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Scoop out the bacon, leaving the fat in the pot, and set aside.
- Add the butter, onions, leeks and celery to the pot and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often, until the vegetables are soft and translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in the fish stock, milk, cream and reserved clam juice, then increase the heat to high and bring to a boil, stirring often. Once boiling, reduce the heat to low, toss in the potatoes and simmer, uncovered, for 15 minutes. Add the clams, reserved bacon, haddock, crab meat, salt and pepper and simmer for another 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
- Stir in the parsley and ladle the chowder into bowls. Top with the croutons. Store leftover soup, without croutons, in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.
