As you get to know me a little more, you’ll learn that I absolutely LOVE all things soup, stews and chowders. I often rave about the greatness of soups. How wonderful it is that you can throw leftovers or whatever needs cooking in your fridge together with staple ingredients you have sitting in your pantry and create a warm, hearty bowl of deliciousness. Soups are meant to be enjoyed throughout the year.
Here’s a simple but delicious chowder made of all on hand, basic ingredients. I jokingly refer to this as Broke Chowder – it’s definitely easy on the wallet. My recipe calls for a can (or two) of tuna. This is a great base recipe so go ahead and substitute salmon, any seafood or protein of your choice and whatever else you’d like to throw in. I’ve added hickory smoked salt – this is a great way to give your chowder a bit of smokiness. You should be able to find it at any establishment that smokes meats. I highly recommend picking some smoked salt up asap – it will truly add some pizzazz to many otherwise ordinary dishes. Though in the meantime, if you don’t have any on hand, you could add a few drops of liquid smoke to the same amount of salt. Or maybe use a bit of smoked paprika or chipotle powder.
This chowder is very simple to put together – minimal prep work and doesn’t require much more work than stirring. You can have a bowl of Tuna Chowder on your table in about half an hour. Makes you think twice about serving canned soups. The variations are endless with this one, you very well may never buy a can of soup again! I almost forgot to mention how much healthier this chowder is. Most creamy soups are loaded with sodium, fat, cholesterol and a list of mystery ingredients. This chowder is ridiculously lighter without sacrificing any flavor. Plus you don’t need to be a chemist to make sense of what you’re eating. Ingredient labels these days are something between a science experiment and a horror story, ewww. We should all feel better when we cook from scratch.
Hope you enjoy…I’ll have many more belly warming soups and stews to come…XOXO
Tuna Chowder
Ingredients
- 3 Tablespoon butter
- 1/2 cup chopped celery
- 1 medium onion chopped
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- 2 Teaspoons Parsley
- 1 1/4 teaspoon Hickory Smoked Salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 cups Chicken Stock
- 2 large potatoes diced
- 1 cup milk
- 1 can tuna drained and flaked
- 1 cup cooked corn optional
Instructions
- Saute celery and onions in butter for about 10 minutes or until tender.
- Add garlic, saute for a minute or two.
- Add parsley, salt, pepper, chicken stock and potatoes.
- Bring to a light boil, reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, until potatoes are desired tenderness - about 10-15 minutes.
- Add corn, tuna and milk. Simmer over medium heat, stirring often, for 5 minutes.
- Serve and enjoy : )
I made this for my wife and kids and they loved this recipe. I did change a few things and it turned out great. I used kosher salt and added smoked paprika since I didn’t have the smoked salt. I also whisked a tablespoon of flour with a 1/4 cup of water and added that to thicken up the sauce a bit, and I used 2 tablespoons of light extra virgin olive oil instead of using butter. In my opinion the corn is a must in this chowder. Thanks for the great recipe!!
Thanks for the recipe CCMama, and thanks Bryce for the additional ideas. I used smoked paprika (instead of smoked salt), too. I added 1/4 c. chopped red pepper (instead of 1 c. corn) and 1 tsp. dill weed (at the same time as the tuna).
Lip smackin’ yum.
Made it and loved it so much. I added about 2 tbsp flour to thicken it. Next time I will most likely add more tuna. This was very good.
We doubled all the ingredients except butter (we used 4 tbsp,, but 3 would’ve been fine). We also added sliced carrots since we had them on-hand. For corn, I used Mecicorn. Two 11 oz cans made it a little corn heavy; next time I’ll use one can and add another vegetable like green beans. We didn’t have hickory smoked salt, but we found hickory liquid smoke; 1/4 tsp was perfect for the double batch. The result? OMG! So good! We gladly looked forward to and ate the leftovers. The recipe seems super versatile, as promised. I can see using chicken, shrimp or even oysters, instead of tuna, added at appropriate times to cook through. Thanks for a great recipe! This is going in our “keepers” list.
This was so good. Added dill and paprika (after reading other users recs). sautéed some scallops I had in the freezer and added them. Will definitely make again with heavy cream, and some canned clams!