Winter hardens the local waters around the wharfs of Vancouver. Temperatures plummet, leaving many of us yearning for warmth. Seafood chowder, using local seafood delivery, allows you to bring warmth to your kitchen table. Delicious because of the many seafood combination options, seafood chowder can become a staple in your household. A few important steps are crucial to making a spectacular seafood chowder.
Local Seafood. Fresh Seafood.
Buying seafood locally ensures that you are receiving the freshest catch for your money. We, BC Live Spot Prawns & Seafood, offer options for both delivery or pickup. Local pickup is available near Ladner Wharf. Check here to see if you can get local seafood delivery directly to your house!
The convenience of pickup or local seafood delivery is not the only perk of online ordering. To preserve the utmost fresh flavour and the healthy nutrients found in seafood, many of our products are flash frozen at sea. This immediate freezing of the product keeps the quality directly from the waters to your kitchen.
Now that you know where and why to buy local, let’s look at the ingredients needed for a hearty seafood chowder.
Staple Ingredients
Seafood chowder can be as simple or extravagant as you want. The following ingredient list will help you get your pantry ready.
The following ingredients are from a classic seafood chowder recipe with milk.
- 1 tbsp (15 mL) butter
- 2 stalks celery chopped
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 bay leaf
- 1 tsp (5 mL) dried dill or dried thyme
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 large Yukon Gold potatoes peeled and diced
- 2 cups (500 mL) water or fish stock
- 1/3 cup (80 mL) all-purpose flour
- 3 cups (750 mL) Milk
- 2 cups (500 mL) chopped raw skinless fish fillets or cooked seafood (spot prawns, lobster, scallops, dungeness crab, clams, oysters) or a combination of anything you are craving for!
- 2 tbsp (30 mL) freshly squeezed lemon juice
Choosing Seafood
There are no right, or wrong combinations, to satisfy your taste buds. A firm textured fish is crucial to a seafood chowder. The base of a chowder requires a firm-fleshed fish that can hold up to the heartiness of the soup. Classic firm textured fish options include Sablefish and Lingcod. Do not allow the idea of purchasing a whole fish to intimidate you! Seafood chowder explodes with taste when made with a good fish stock. Roasting the carcass of the fish in the oven, browning slightly, and then boiling them in a stockpot establishes a base for your fish stock. Clarification of your fish stock, using egg whites, creates an easily accessible egg raft that is skimmed off the top of the broth. Scallops, Dungeness Crab, and Spot Prawns are additional seafood to add.
Cooking and Timing
Having local seafood delivered directly to your door ensures you are receiving fresh quality products. It also changes certain cooking times, depending on fresh or frozen seafood. It is important to remember to always wash your hands when working with seafood to prevent bacteria growth.
You can find safe handling of seafood and respected refrigeration times of seafood on our blog. Make sure you plan out when you are going to be cooking the seafood chowder. This will help you determine thawing times of any flash frozen seafood. It is best to have all your intended ingredients to be thawed before beginning a recipe.
The timing of seafood chowder has a general “longest to shortest” theme when adding ingredients to the stock. Cooking everything in one large stock pot will capture the individual ingredient’s flavours while retaining appropriate texture. Adding an ingredient with a short cooking time to the stock first can quickly overcook that ingredient, resulting in loss of textural integrity. It is helpful to make a list of ingredients from longest to the shortest cooking times before starting your seafood chowder recipe.
Conclusion
Seafood chowder is a delicious meal that will help keep you warm during these winter frigid months. Creativity and flavour profile is completely up to you and your inspiration when deciding on which seafood combinations to add. Thankfully, you have access to local seafood pickup and delivery, ensuring high quality fresh product. Our seafood bundles are available to help build the culinarian in yourself! Choosing a firm textured fish and understanding each ingredient’s individual cooking time give a solid foundation to any seafood chowder.
