Seafood Chowder Recipe Served In A Bread Bowl (2024)

This seafood chowder recipe is a reproduction of the chowder I discovered on my first trip to Ireland, creamy and packed with large chunks of seafood. Mussels, cod and salmon chowder to eat in a bread bowl or with a nice slice of Irish brown bread.

Chowder and Irish seafood

Chowder is a common dish in New England, it is a soup made with a white sauce. It is usually made with milk and cream and thickened with potatoes or a roux (a mix of flour and butter). The most well-known chowder isclam chowder, and you can find the recipe on Dishes Delish.

It seems that the name was originated by the French word chaudière (“cauldron”) and spread into Nova Scotia and New England by the Breton fishermen. While originally it is made with seafood, there are now many versions of chowder with vegetables or meat.

It is no surprise that chowder is so common in Ireland, as the fresh fish from the Atlantic Ocean or the Irish sea make for delicious chowder, a seafood lovers paradise.

If you want to know more about Irish seafood and where I recommend going to eat the best Irish seafood, you can read my article Fish Pie with a Mediterranean Twist.

For seafood ideas for the Feast of Seven Fishes, check out this Web Story.

What seafood in the seafood chowder

I have tried different types of chowder in Ireland and my favourite is the one with large chunks of fish like cod or salmon. I have had chowder with razor clams, and, if you can find them I highly recommend using them.

Here in the Mediterranean, I prefer to use mussels but I wouldn't change cod or salmon with any other fish. You could use seabass but I think it will be too chunky for the soup.

Preparing the mussels (or the clam)

Whatever type of shellfish you decide to use, you can follow the instructions below. The same rules and techniques can be applied to any shellfish.

The juices from the shellfish will be used to flavour the soup once it has been filtered to remove any residual sand.

How to choose and cook fresh mussels

Mussels are delicious when fresh, but they can be a dangerous source of seafood poisoning if not chosen correctly.

Buy them only at your trusted fishmonger and ask them to clean them as they are a pain in the neck to clean. They are often full of barnacles and if you are lucky your fingers will be sore but not bleeding.

Personally I always try to avoid them during the hot season, neither buying them or ordering them at restaurants. The heat makes seafood more susceptible to attract bacteria.

Fresh mussels should be cooked alive, once dead they will be infected.

Here is how to make sure fresh mussels are alive:

• Fresh mussels should always be closed and cannot be opened no matter how hard you try
• Discharge any open or broken mussels
• Rinse them under running water one by one and throw away any open or broken mussels
• If they are open but when you touch them they close and will not open if you try, they are fine to eat.

How to cook the fresh mussels

In this recipe, I make 1 lb - 500 gr of mussels as they are sold in that quantity, but you only need a small amount.

Fresh mussels are naturally salted, you do not need to add any salt

The ingredients are:

• 1 lb - 500 gr of fresh mussels
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 cup dry white wine
• 2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

This is how to proceed:

1. In a frying pan, stir fry 1 sliced clove of garlic.
2. Put in the mussels and stir fry them covered until they are all open.
3. Stir from time to time
4. Add 1 cup of white wine and let it simmer for 1 minute until it evaporates
5. When they are ready, remove the mussels...
6. ...but keep the water.

Important points when cooking mussels

• Fresh mussels are naturally salted, you do not need to add any salt
• When cooking mussels, keep the pan covered and turn them every once in a while to make sure they are all open
• Once open, the mussels are cooked
• Do not overcook the mussels, 2 to 3 minutes is enough.
• If some mussels are still not open, remove the open ones and cook only the closed ones.
• Any mussels that remain closed even after cooking them should be discarded.
• Remove any broken open mussels after you have cooked them, but do not worry if you find some when you have finished cooking. The rest of the mussels will not be infected.

7. Strain the water through a paper cloth and let it rest so that any residual sand will fall to the bottom.
8. Clean the mussels and put them aside.

Boiling the potatoes

The potatoes are boiled separately in milk and cream as they take longer to cook. The potatoes will release their starch in the milk, making it creamier.

The ingredients you need are:

• 3 medium potatoes
• 1 ¼ cup - 300 ml of milk
• ½ cup - 120 ml of cream
• 1 bay leaf

1. Peel and chop the potatoes and put them in a casserole
2. Add the milk, the cream and the bay leaf
3. Bring to boil, then simmer for 20 minutes

Preparing the seafood chowder

Now we can start completing the chowder, and here are the rest of the ingredients needed

Ingredients

• 1 diced onion
• 2 chopped carrots
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 5 oz - 150 g of bacon
• 3.5 oz - 100 g cod
• 3.5 oz - 100 g salmon

1. In another casserole dish, stir fry the chopped onion, carrots and celery stalks with butter
2. Once the onion is translucent, add the bacon
3. Let the bacon crisp a little
4. Pour the boiled potatoes with the milk into the casserole dish
5. Add 1 cup of the filtered mussel juice
6. Simmer for another 5 minutes

6. Add the chunks of cod and salmon
7. Stir but make sure you don't break up the chunks
8. Once the cod and the salmon is cooked...
9. ...add the mussels and stir
10. Taste and adjust for salt if necessary
11. The chowder is ready to be served

What bread to use for a bowl

Using a loaf of bread as a bowl is a fancy way to present a dish, but you need to choose the right bread to do so. Sourdough or rustic bread will do.

Make sure it has a crunchy thick crust so that it will hold the food and not get too soggy once you fill it with the chowder.

I prefer to serve it in a large bowl to avoid any possibly spilling on the table.

Normally you use the top of the bread to dip into the soup, and that would be already quite filling. Even if the bread bowl itself would have nicely soaked up all the juices, I doubt any normal person could eat the entire bread bowl. But...you never know!

Serving the seafood chowder in a bread bowl

1. Cut the top off the bread loaves
2. Remove the inside leaving the crust
3. Fill the bread bowl with the chowder
4. Decorate with edible flowers Agastache

Tips for making the best seafood chowder

• Make sure the fish you buy is fresh
• Use large chunks of cod and/or salmon
• For shellfish you can use clams, razor clams or mussels, make sure they are fresh
• Never overcook seafood, always add it at the end
• Add the juices of the shellfish but make sure it is filtered and the sand removed
• To make the chowder creamier boil the potatoes for 10 minutes longer

Decorating with edible flowers

Edible flowers are a wonderful decoration to use for a festive dinner party. Not only they add colour to a special dish but also a unique taste.

They are very versatile and you can use them in many ways, but personally, I prefer using them raw. Cooking edible flowers ruins their beauty, and it is their fresh colourful look that brings joy to a dish.

I like to use them in salads or soup, but it is very important to choose the right combination of flavours. Some flowers have a garlicky or peppery flavour and will only go with savoury dishes, while others have a more acidic flavour and can be combined with sweet dishes as well.

Edible flowers Agastache

I must tell you the truth, even if I like its shape and colour, Agastache is my least favourite of the 4 edible flowers. But that is just me, aniseed, dill or fennel seeds are too strong for my taste but I must admit, they do combine well with seafood.

So I thought they would go well with nice seafood chowder, and indeed they do. In addition, they finish the beautiful bread bowl off with joyful purple colour.

What else can you do with Agastache

It is up to your imagination, I recommendusing them raw for decorating your final dishes. You can add them to any recipe where you would otherwise use dill or fennel seeds.

Where can you buy edible flowers?

Unfortunately, edible flowers are not yet available in all supermarkets and mostly you find them in shops that serve professionals chefs, like Metro in France and Italy. Unfortunately, you can only buy in these shops if you have a business licence.

Although edible flowers are slowly appearing in Supermarkets, they are still a novelty. In France, you might find them in some Grand Frais supermarket and I was told that Whole Foods Market has them in the USA.

I am looking for more information, so if you know where to find edible flowers near you, please share the information with a comment below. Thank you for helping!

NT: Only use edible flowers that are grown to be eaten. Flowers grown for decoration may have been treated with dangerous chemicals

Here are the edible flowers I am featuring in my posts:

1. Nasturtium Capucines: papery taste
2. Begonia: bitter taste
3. Agastache: aniseed taste
4. Tulbaghia: garlicky taste

More recipes with edible flowers

If you are interested in edible flower recipes, I have many here for you. You can find sweet as well as savoury recipes. Make sure you pick flowers that are safe to eat. Even if they are edible, they should not have been treated with chemicals.

Savoury recipes:

• Fried zucchini flowers
• Italian zucchini frittata with flowers
• Roast Pumpkin Soup With Edible Flowers Capucines
• Fresh Tomato Soup Salmorejo With Edible Flowers Tulbaghia
• Chayote Squash Mousse with Mussels With Edible Flowers Begonia

Sweet recipes:

• Homemade crystallized violets
• Swiss roll with crystallized violets
• Beignet d'Acacia

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