Introduction
Does the title of this blog sound like a bold claim? I mean, we are putting it up against so many other kinds of soups. There’s Pho, Ramen, Rawon, Bori-Bori, and Gulai… the point is, there are a lot of soups in the world, and claiming that chowder is the king of all soups needs some solid grounds to stand on. So, without further ado, let’s put on our lawyer’s gowns and get busy.
Is Chowder Soup or Stew?
Before we get to the bottom of our previous query, we have something else at hand to settle first. Something that takes precedence since we are debating the very nature of this marvelous dish. Is chowder soup, or is it stew? For that, let’s start by defining each of the two and see where that lands us.
Soup
Soup is basically a liquid food characterized by its liquid appearance. It’s runny and made with either meat, fish, vegetables, or a combination of these while also containing pieces of solid food. It is mostly savory and requires boiling the said ingredients to extract their flavor.
Going by this definition, we can easily categorize chowder as soup since it is savory, liquidy, requires a “lot” of boiling, and contains pieces of the ingredients used to make it, such as corn, potatoes, meat, bacon, etc. Usually, it is served with a side, such as bread, salad, sandwich, etc.
Stew
Contrary to soup, stew is more hearty and “stewed” to make it. In other words, it is cooked slowly over low to medium heat over a long period. As a result, the soup in it mostly gets evaporated, and we are left with a dense liquid that has a lot of solids in it, such as vegetables and meat. It doesn’t need a side dish but can be served with bread or rice, which perfectly complements it.
So, Which One is Chowder?
Well, having said all that we have, chowder is… (wait for it) Chowder! The MVP stands alone atop every soup or stew for the sole reason that it is a hybrid, an upgrade on either. Think about it: it looks and feels like a soup, but at the same time, it has the consistency and deep, rich flavors of stew.
Still, it is mostly associated with soup and defined as such as well. So that’s how we will treat it, as a soup, but not just any soup, but a soup that is superior to all the other kinds of soup. It’s a complete meal on its own; in fact, it is soup on the nth degree!
More Types Than You Can Count
I am Courtenay Hachey, and I am a shameless lover of food. I say this statement so often that it has become my catchphrase and for a good reason. You see, I am passionate about food and trying new recipes. Or, more precisely, creating new recipes. By experimenting with food, I have familiarized myself with what ingredients go together and have created a number of dishes in my unofficial career as a cooking expert.
One of the things I encountered was having a lot of chowder left over, as it was routine for me to cook a batch every week. That’s where my love for chowder originally sprouted from. Having cooked so many kinds of chowder from common and affordable ingredients, I decided to take it a step further and experiment with the leftover chowder. As my luck would have it, I successfully developed a number of dishes from the leftover chowder that I would cook over the course of the rest of the week.
This didn’t only apply to a specific type of chowder but any kind of chowder I cooked. Having complete mastery over the dish and an intricate sense of how to combine the right ingredients, I went on to experiment with a lot of ingredients and created perfect “Chowders & Shake-Ups,” as I call them, for every type of chowder.
As a result, I started looking forward to shake-ups that I would cook for the rest of the week, even more than the chowder itself. The entire thing was so amazing, convenient, and delicious that I decided to share it with the rest of the world. Hence, I published my book, Chowders & Shake-Ups for the Week, which is available on Amazon.
From DNA to SHAKE-UPS
In my book, you will find that each chowder is created with a unique base, a creation of mine that can even be served as a dish of its own. That base or the DNA (juicy potatoes) is the perfect starter to combine any number of your preferred ingredients on top of it to create a new kind of chowder. Or, you can opt for a chowder from my cookbook, each having multiple Shake-Ups for it that you can cook throughout the rest of the week with the leftover chowder.
This way, not only will there be no waste of food, but the Shake-Ups will keep the rest of your week lively. You can’t do that with any soup now, can you? The same goes for stews. You see, besides being a complete meal on its own, chowder is the only dish that can be successfully transformed into a completely new and unrecognizable dish.
All Hail the King!
I believe that settles the debate. Not just the debate of whether chowder is a soup or stew (it’s a soup, but a standalone kind of soup), but how it is the king of all soups! No soup can compare to its splendor since it is a hybrid of soup and stew, making it superior in its own rights. Not to mention, it is the only soup that can yield so many different and delicious Shake-Ups to be enjoyed over the course of an entire week. If you like the idea of enjoying chowder as a number of different dishes for the next few days instead of just wasting it, I invite you to purchase my book, which will not only change the way you look at chowder but get you hooked on it (Chowders & Shake-Ups).
