4 Levels of Chowder: Amateur to Food Scientist | Epicurious

Hello, I am Sharif and I am a level one chef, I am Julie and I am a level two chef, I am Frank, I am a chef instructor at the institute of culinary education and I have been a professional chef for 25 years the main ingredient in my soup is corn. This is for people who love corn and soup. I love corn on the cob, so why not combine the two and make a nice creamy corn

chowder

? I'm going to make clam

chowder

however I want. I'm going to make a kind of clam chowder that I've never made before called Manhattan clam chowder, let's find out how to make Manhattan clam chowder today we're going to make crab chowder with homemade crackers and I think it's a perfect sea

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to put in crab chowder It's a little sweet and has a great flakiness to it which is perfect for this soup.

Okay, now let's shuck this corn. I don't peel corn often. The first thing we need to do is prepare our fresh clams. and I have left them to soak in a container with water, there is a lot of sand and we want to get all that out. It takes a minute or two and I'm talking Jamaican minutes so maybe 20 or 25 minutes isn't surprising for my crab. fish soup the main ingredient is crabs and the crabs in front of me are fresh crabs and I will use them for my broth to get the best crab. You have to buy a lot of them and you have to kill them and clean them. eat them yourself because if they're dead when you get them you don't know how long they've been dead and they're not good to eat these crabs are actually sacrificial crabs they're not really big and they don't have a ton of meat but I'm going to use them for flavor my broth and a broth is a flavor base for soups of all kinds.

Okay, let's cut this corn. It's okay, it's not that difficult. A little more work than canned corn, but if you want. To make your soup perfect, I'm going to save these, we'll use them later, that's it, and look at this whole mess here, other than the crabs and the crab shells, I have some giant chunk crab meat and the giant chunk it is what it is. This is going to be the texture of the soup and basically the main body of the soup, so the next thing we're going to do is cut up all of our crabs so we can get a lot of surface area and get as much flavor out of them as possible. crabs and now I'm going to start with my other ingredients, we're going to dice this and chop when I make broth and this is going to drive a lot of people crazy, you can put skins in the broth, people will clutch their pearls about this, but like this It's how I was taught and I went to a decent school.

Same thing with the garlic, we'll just give it a hit and for the celery as well, now let's cut the vegetables for the garnish and basically. the things that are going to float in the soup, well, we'll start with the celery in your celery ribs, sometimes strings hang from your mouth, the celery and thyme will add a nice flavor, just a nice regular onion. I'm going to cut it into cubes, I don't know if there is a special way to cut it, but I'm doing it to my liking. At the end of the day, fish soup is kind of a rustic soup, so it's not perfect.

Don't worry, you know I always need some kind of pepper, but today it's not scotch, so we're going to cut the stems off our flat leaf parsley, but we're going to coarsely chop the parsley and our potatoes. so we have to peel this soup, not without potatoes, whether red or white, I have a red potato here we want starchy potatoes, that is the correct cooking preference and with potatoes for this there will be some pieces that are a little bit bigger and some that a little bit smaller and the smaller ones will melt and give our soup a little bit thick like a thickening powder because traditionally the soup is thickened with potatoes and crackers right in the middle, in the middle, in the middle and then down, look at that perfect, I wanted to have a little bit of garlic background it will still give this a very rough cut and then we're going to do the bacon.

I like maple. You can use any type of smoked bacon that's good for you and I'm just going to cut this into something that I like to call lardone, which are big, thick pieces of bacon like that, so that's what I'm looking for, time to get started. to cook, finally okay, it's time to start cooking. I have my ears of corn here in the pot. I'm going to add my chicken broth now and let them infuse into the corn cobs. The first thing we want to do with our broth is put the crabs in there and first we're going to put a little bit of fat in there just to start.

I have our clarified butter, it has a nice buttery flavor, but it doesn't have any of the components that cause butter to burn at high temperatures. Once the butter melts, we're going to add our crab, but I don't really want to. brown anything here, I'm just going to sweat and sweat is colorless cooking and once our shells start to color, I'm going to add the onions, garlic and celery, my crabs and my vegetables will be all sweaty and I'm going to deglaze with a little dry sherry and what that will do is prevent the crabs from cooking on the bottom and when we deglaze we want to cook out all the alcohol and usually that means you're going to cook. the sherry was reduced by half, so we waited for that and I'm going to boil corn on the cob with the chicken broth for about 10 minutes because after all, it's corn soup, right?

And you see, I didn't cut the tomatoes I'm using. canned diced tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes because they have been sitting, packed and diced in their own juice and it gives us the flavor that fresh tomatoes really can't give. I don't smell any more alcohol, it's time to add. the water and you usually want to start with about six quarts of water, our broth has started to simmer, we're going to add our herbs, a little bit of thyme, uh, this is a large bay leaf, I'm just going to put about the half and a good bunch of parsley, our crab broth has been cooking for about 35 to 40 minutes.

I'm going to try it. That's how we determine that everything in the kitchen tastes good, has a really nice crab flavor and we're. I'm just going to pour it in and that's it, that's our broth, the first thing we're going to do is release some of the fat, as I call it, using our bacon. I'm going to put a little bit of my whole butter in there and using whole butter to flavor it here and I'm not necessarily looking for this bacon to get too brown or too dark, I just want to remove a little bit of the fat, I feel like it complements the crab and then it it adds that good flavor, you can see that delicious crispy bacon, that's how they want it now, what they want to do is get a nice layer of fat that they can cook their vegetables in.

My bacon is melted. I'm going to add my onions and celery now I know you can. It doesn't smell like this but the bacon fat with the onion and celery smells so good and we're not even done yet add my butter and my garlic and add my thyme now I'm going to put onions and mix everything together don't just throw everything in at once , then you will mix the red peppers with celery. Now that you've put all of this stuff in here, the bacon won't get tough or crispy, it'll just continue to cook. and release its flavors as a professional cook we tend to season throughout the cooking process a little here a little there if you only season at the end your product is going to be salty but if you season throughout the entire process you get a better kind of balance of flavors not going to be salty I think I can add the garlic now the vegetables are also sweaty I have a little more sherry it's just slowing down the cooking giving us a little more of that base flavor in our soup so last thing we're going to add our diced potatoes and I'll just take the potatoes out of the water and throw them all in, but the vegetables at the end of the day are what we'll thicken this soup with. my flour now and this will help thicken your soup.

I can add my corn, the main ingredient, we'll add to the potatoes, the tomatoes and of course our chicken broth. I'm going to let this simmer for about 15 minutes, maybe. We will add a little salt and pepper. Remember the clam juice in the bottle we will add two cups and let this mix so the flavors can cohere and create a beautiful resting place for our clams. that looks like the Italian flag and we're going to add our broth. What we're going to do now is let this come to a boil, once it comes to a boil we'll lower it to a simmer and then cook it until our potatoes are soft or starting to fall apart a little a lot of times with white soups or cream soups. chefs don't like to use black pepper but it's actually traditional with a corn soup to use black pepper and I like black pepper a lot more than white pepper, it's thickening up pretty quickly so now I'm going to move on and cutting the bacon while it simmers a little longer, really completes the corn chowder.

Let's take a look, I have a feeling it's almost time for clams, yes, now we're going to put our fresh clams in and we're just going to throw them in, unlike eggs, you can put them in a basket and let it cook over low heat again and the The way we're going to know that it's cooked is that it should be open like a flower. The soup has been cooking for about 20 to 25 minutes. I want the potatoes to start falling apart. There are some pieces in there whose edges are starting to crumble. a little rough I want some of the potatoes to stay whole but I want some of the potatoes to fall apart because what we're going to do next is puree about half of the soup, but I'm going to be very careful not to get some bacon, uh, classically the soup is thickened with potatoes and crackers.

One thing you need to worry about when you have hot soup in a blender is that once you turn it on you will get a big burst of steam. and everything will be shooting everywhere, so you have to start everything very slow. I also put a towel on top, we got a nice soft texture and this goes back to our soup. It was a little bit dark and now it's gotten a little bit lighter and that's what we're looking for okay this has been simmering for 15 minutes so now let's add our milk and our bacon and then we'll let it simmer for another 20 minutes and then half of the soup puree will be done.

What I'm going to do is lower the heat and then I'm going to add my cream. I'm just going to add the cream to give it a more luxurious flavor, so we're going to season this with a good amount of black pepper. To be really sure about the salt, the right amount of salt might be a small grain of salt, guys, I think we're ready, let's see, our clams are open, that means we're ready, so I think what I'm going to do It's chopping. Before you put them back in the soup, just keep one or two in the shell because it makes a really nice presentation.

Now with the crab we went to the trouble of getting a really nice giant piece, it weighs about a pound and a half, just heat it up. and I'm going to call it a day, look at that delicious crab soup, throw it back in the pot, a little salt, a little pepper, a little parsley, simmer it a little, you can't have soup without crackers I mean, come on. It just wouldn't be right. I decided to go with the classic crackers. I loved them when I was a child. They were always called oyster crackers, but now they are called soup crackers and oyster crackers.

I'm going to make my own in the

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processor we have the flour baking powder salt sugar both herbs Italian flat leaf parsley thyme and a little bit of lard which I think is pretty good and we're going to take some of that cold water and pour it until it forms a bottle, okay I take this and I'm going to put it on my board. I have a small bench flower in case it sticks. I won't need it much because I want the cookies to be flaky and a little puffy. We are going to put it. in the refrigerator for about 20 minutes let it rest our dough is rested we're going to roll it out basically what we're going to do is roll this out to the thickness that we want and then cut it into little round cookies so I'm looking for about a quarter inch pretty small and all I do is cut them up and I'm going to put them in a vertical pan, we're going to get a little bit of leavening because it's got the baking powder in there, uh, it's also got a little bit of that lard that's in there, so we're going to get a little bit of puff, which is good.

The crackers are cooked if you look at them, they are very good, they have a little golden color to them, they have puffed up a little here is my method I like them whole I like to dip my crackers in the soup I know some people like to crush them whole crackers a cookie with every spoonful of perfect soup I like to take my cookies crumble them slightly so that they absorb a little of the soup but if you don't like it that way, put them aside and let them float whole, it's your soup, you enjoy it, but it I will do it my way and the way I like it, let's plate it on a plate, let's go for this. in a bowl so we can try it, so I have to have my cookies on the side, the only thing left is to eat and make it look pretty before demolishing it, garnish with some fresh parsley, our last finishing touch to make it things are really real.

It's good that you put a clam on your plate and that my friends are Manhattan clam chowder. If you put hot soup on a cold plate, it cools down very quickly, so I like to heat my plate a little in the oven at 150 degrees and tryget a little bit of everything there and then just take your cookies now however you want. I'm going to break up my crackers a little bit and sprinkle them with some freshly ground black pepper. This is my corn soup. This is very excited Manhattan clam soup and that's my soup, well now to the most exciting part, we can try this, look at it, just look at it, look how beautiful it is beautiful, big pieces of crab not too thick, delicious, look , that's how soup is supposed to be.

Yes, I think it's amazing. I think anyone you put this in front of will be your best friend. Try it immediately. Do it at home. I tell you, you will thank me. Chowder is a hearty North American soup. Delicious and filling, it is usually made from seafood, but it doesn't have to be. Let's see how each of our three chefs made theirs. Sharif made his grandmother's sweet corn soup. Corn is native to America and there are two main types of dent corn which is indented and harvested in the fall and used as grain to make cornmeal and sweet corn which is the familiar golden or white vegetable that Sharif used in his soup.

It is also very demanding with my soup when the corn is heated, volatile sulfur molecules such as dimethyl sulfide are expressed. This is a flavor molecule that is also found in the aroma of cooked milk and seafood, which is why corn is a fabulous soup. It has to have the right flavor. Julie made clam chowder with small sweet clams with cherry pits. Clams are bivalves with two hard shells and a hinge called the adductor muscle that controls the opening and closing of the two shelves. Julie's clams were alive and soaked in cold salt water because they naturally extracted the residual sand and grits still inside the shells, which you don't want in your soup, who does? sand in the teeth of her crab soup made with giant chunked white crab meat that comes from the two large mussels that are connected to the swimming legs of the crab.

Crab meat gets its flavor from high concentrations of free amino acids, particularly glycine, which has a sweet taste, and sugars. In your muscle tissue, these molecules react to form flavor molecules such as pyrazines and thiols that are typically associated with grilled meats. I love it. I love it. All of our chefs used celery in their soup. Celery has strings that can be difficult to chew. You know that no. I don't use enough celery, I think I don't bite into it anymore and then these strings would hang out of your mouth. There are a few different types of threads deep in the leaf that most people call stems.

They are xylem that moves water and phloem that moves. food through the plant tissues, these threads help keep the celery crisp. A third type of thread are external skeletal threads called colincoma, which are made of cellulose and pectins, interact with the surrounding cell walls and stretch relatively easily without breaking, almost like plastic, making them difficult to chew and break down. , these are the ones that most likely bother Julie and did you know that you actually burn more calories eating celery than there are in celery? It's a little more complicated than that. Julie's celery is very low in calories and your body expands the energy by digesting and metabolizing it, especially if it has strings, but the metabolism is complex and as soon as you add any other food with celery, the mathematical equation for calories changes, so That, although adding celery to your diet is a good thing from a nutritional perspective, it is not going to offset the calories of other foods you are eating with it.

I don't know science guys, I just know how to cook sharif, serve corn soup with crackers, sometimes called soda crackers because they are made with baking soda and flour, they are starchy. flat squares that add a nice crunch to your soup everything works julie served her soup with oyster crackers you may wonder why they are called oyster crackers if they are used in clam chowder there are no oysters in the cracker but the way they They got their name from two different points in history, maybe because they originally have this kind of weird shape, maybe oyster shell, but I'm not really sure why they call them oyster crackers. .

I don't know, maybe pink, some say? They got their name because they are shaped like an oyster, others because they were made to go with oyster stew, either way people have been eating these little starchy white crackers for hundreds of years, they are too dry so they don't get soggy very quickly when you add them to a soup, yes frank made his own delicious level 3 oyster crackers and elevated them instead of relying solely on flour, baking soda, water and salt, he added parsley, thyme and fat of bacon. I'm proud of myself no matter how you do it. like your clam or crab chowder, we hope you follow some tips from our three outstanding chefs.