Creamy and savory fish chowder made in the slow cooker, so it can simmer gently all day and be ready to eat when I’m done working? Yes, please!!
This is liberally adapted from a recipe in The Southern Slow Cooker Bible by Tammy Algood. The basis of potatoes liberally flavored with leeks and fennel produced a rich and comforting chowder that reheats beautifully for multiple meals.
Of course, my inner 12-year-old boy keeps yelling “chow-DAH” all the time I’m making this. You understand.
Here’s the basic cast of characters.
Peeled and chopped potatoes, into the bottom of the slow cooker so they can cook more thoroughly, under all the other ingredients and up against the warm sides of the pot.
Fennel has a pronounced licorice smell, but a primarily celery-like flavor. I chopped up just the main whitish bulb.
Then, I broke out the strainer. The fennel probably didn’t need it, but the leeks and beans benefit from this method…and I see no reason to create three different cleaning methods if I don’t have to. Laziness pays off in the kitchen!
I chucked all the chopped fennel into a strainer, rinsed it thoroughly, then shook it dry and added it to the pot.
Then, as I learned the hard way once, leeks don’t benefit from you exercising all your frugal, use the whole veggie, instincts. Just use the white parts! Seriously.
The green parts are horrifically bitter…it’s very scary when you ruin a whole pot of beef stew by chopping in all the leeks. Very scary…
Anyhoo…besides the green parts, leeks grow up through the soil and tend to have little bits of dirt inside each layer, so they take a little bit of attention when washing. So I did the same thing as the fennel: chopped them up and then rinsed the chopped pieces thoroughly in the strainer:
Then we’re on to the canned pantry items. I have found the high-sodium versions of canned beans have a much better texture than the low-sodium versions, and they’re cheaper…which isn’t fair and I’ll have to investigate the reasons for that some time. For now, anyway, I use beans that work better for me and just rinse off all the excess salt.
Rinsed and into the pot! I’m using my strainer almost as much as the slow cooker by this point.
Then, as you can see, this stew is looking very minimalist in the color department. I also added a few cloves of garlic which added more pale whitish stuff. MMM. Not really.
One small can diced tomatoes to lively everything up. Great flavor, finally some color, and not so much tomato that it dominates the dish. Looking good!
As you can see, this is looking like a big veggie salad right now, and not quite so much like a liquid soup. You don’t need a whole lot of liquid since a crock pot traps in all the moisture, but you do need some. I used clam juice for the chowder flavor, and vegetable stock for the richness.
Now I really get to have fun, my style. Time to raid the spice cabinet and see what’s going to go well with this.
Obviously, some Old Bay is an easy choice for anything seafood-related. I wanted some celery seed to harmonize with the fennel and leeks, rounding out the flavor profile, plus it plays really nicely with tomatoes.
White pepper seduced me into falling in love with potato soup in my early teens, so it’s got to go in here. The recipe I was messing around with called for some oregano, which sounded good. I’ve got to go to the store and get some more oregano on its own, but I did have an Italian blend which includes basil and marjoram with the oregano. I used a light hand with this as I find basil tends to take over a bit.
And then, to really warm up the whole mixture, I tried out a few shakes of this fun seasoning blend my in-laws brought me from Savannah. As you can see, it’s got some of the notes I’ve already used, in celery seed and white pepper, but it’s also got some warm notes that remind me of a North African stew, with the cinnamon, allspice, and nutmeg. Give it a go!
So, here’s everything in the pot, before and after stirring:
This cooks away without much interference for 8 hours on low. Now, those of you playing at home have probably noticed there’s not a lot of fish in this fish chowder. That’s because it goes in at the end, since it cooks so quickly. I used about 2-1/2 pounds of tilapia, chopped, and laid it on top of the steaming stew for another 30 minutes.
I finished with a tablespoon of heavy cream to thicken the broth and sweeten the tomatoes, and dished it up, garnishing with a little parsley for more color and taste.
And there you have it…dinner from the slow cooker with no maintenance. This is a good weekend dish just because the fish cooks for extra time at the end. If you don’t come home, as I do, raging hungry and unwilling to wait another 20 minutes while the fish cooks, then by all means do this as a weeknight slow cooker meal.
