Clam Up, or Else!!

Sunday, January 9th in Wisconsin.....it is cold!!  What is better than a hot bowl of soup on a winter day?
A hot bowl of killer New England Clam Chowder!!  I grocery shop on Sundays and was trying to come up with something yummy and warm when I ran across this recipe in the America's Test Kitchen book, "The Best Simple Recipes".  It sounded really good so I picked up everything that I would need and here is how it went.




In a pot I put the clam juice, cut potatoes, bay leaves and thyme and got the pot to boil then turned down the heat to simmer. While that is doing it's thing...

I broke out my super magic pan, for all of you who don't know this is my coveted Le Creuset dutch oven, I browned up some small chunks of bacon.  I cooked them till they were very crunchy and removed them to add back later.

The next step had me at "soften in bacon drippings".  You have to leave the bacon grease in the pot and add in onions and garlic till they are soft and aromatic.  The onions love the bacon fat and this recipe guarantees lots of flavor in a soup that takes about a half and hour, so buck up and just do it.  This soup makes it worth the slight hardening of the arteries and I contend that the garlic and onions will cancel that part out.

See don't the onions look happy swimming around in all that is bacon?  Next, because we don't want to waste the fat and we need to thicken the soup a bit, we need to add flour.  Don't forget to keep stirring.

The flour and oil make a roux so we need to pour in all of that potato herb broth that is simmering on the other burner.  The clams were getting a little impatient but their time had come so I added them and the cream and just left it all to simmer for about 10 minutes.

MMMMMMM, heavy cream!  We love this stuff.




After some simmering and the melding of subtle flavors it all came together.  Warning!  This soup is really good and the inclusion of a crusty bread to soak up the creamy but not thick like gravy broth, will make you crave the quick goodness.

I am now toasty warm from the inside and, with my fluffy sheep skin slippers that I got for Christmas, I am cozy on the couch.  Ahhhhhhhh.  The recipe can be found here.

Mosty Toasty!

The Monkey Queen


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