Potato Chowder Soup
Potato Chowder Soup is a hearty soup made with potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, corn, and simmered in a creamy broth.
Potato Chowder Soup is a hearty soup made with potatoes, carrots, celery, onion, corn, and simmered in a creamy broth.
- Carbohydrate 60.8402067177623 g
- Cholesterol 516.512500196044 mg
- Fat 171.592823405592 g
- Fiber 4.29341668607879 g
- Protein 102.65550001799 g
- Saturated Fat 107.821398378121 g
- Serving Size 1 1 recipe (1062g)
- Sodium 3058.8443344192 mg
- Sugar 56.5467900316835 g
- Trans Fat 10.8637383391098 g
- Calories 2187 calories
Step-by-step
- Place potatoes, carrots, celery, onion and salt in a large pot with water to cover. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, combine butter, milk and flour in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir constantly until smooth and thick.
- Pour milk mixture into cooked vegetables. Stir in corn and cheese until cheese is melted. Serve.
Why is the broth separating instead of binding smoothly around the potatoes and vegetables? Achieving a cohesive chowder depends entirely on managing starches and fats during cooking. Potatoes release free starches into the boiling water as they soften, while a separate cooked butter and flour paste—known as a roux—provides structural stability so the dairy fats do not break under heat.
Controlling Texture and Thickness
Simmering the diced potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion together in water for 20 minutes ensures the cell walls soften completely without turning the pieces into mush. Watch for the fork-tender visual cue when piercing a potato cube. Meanwhile, whisking butter, milk, and flour over medium-low heat cooks out the raw flour taste while gelatinizing the starches. Stir constantly during this phase to prevent scorching at the bottom of the saucepan. Pouring this thickened dairy base into the hot vegetables binds the cooking water and melted cheddar cheese into a uniform emulsion. Scaling this recipe up or down requires maintaining the precise one-to-one ratio of flour to butter for the thickening base, though total simmer times for the vegetables will remain largely unaffected by batch size.
- Grainy cheese results from adding cheddar to a boiling pot; always reduce heat or remove the pot from the burner before stirring in the cheese.
- Starchy potato varieties like Russets dissolve more easily into the broth than waxy red potatoes, altering the overall viscosity.
- Scorched milk occurs when heat is applied too rapidly; keep the saucepan at medium-low and maintain constant motion with a whisk.
