Seattle Style Smoked Salmon Chowder Recipe Little Spice Jar

All you need is a hunk of crispy, crusty baguette to soak it all up. This is a rainy day, smooth jazz, Sunday-couldn’t-be-more-perfect kind of food. Every bite of this smoked salmon chowder is loaded with flaked salmon, tiny shrimp, briny capers, a hearty broth, tender cubed potatoes, and the coziest creamy base. It’s something the whole family will love. The best kind of chowder is thickened naturally with potatoes. So you won’t find any flour in this recipe. To me, it sometimes gives chowder a weird grainy texture. None of that here. Chowder that’s thickened naturally with the starch from the potatoes means that this recipe is gluten-free friendly! After spending 10 days on our west coast trip and eating our hearts out in three different states, one of the most memorable things we ate till this day is the smoked salmon chowder at Seattle’s Pike Place Market. The thing about salmon chowder is that it gets you from the very first bite—the creaminess followed by the briny, yet rich soup base. Then, there’s smoky salmon and all sorts of delicious spices.

What is chowder?

A chowder is a homemade soup that has a creamy base and is often made with seafood, vegetables, and potatoes. You can make fish chowder, clam chowder, corn chowder, and so many other kinds. Chowder can be thickened with the natural starch of potatoes, a roux, or even crushed crackers. The most widely known is the New England clam chowder.

What do you need to make the best creamy smoked salmon chowder recipe?

Butter: The butter is the base of this chowder. We’ll use it for cooking our veggies in a large stock pot.Onions: You want to do a fine chop on the onions, so they just blend right into the soup base.Celery: Again, chop them finely so that they just melt into the chowder base, and the flavor runs through and through.Garlic: I’m using a good six cloves in this recipe as it helps provide lots of flavor! Feel free to use less if you aren’t a fan.Potatoes: I like to do a ½ inch dice on the potatoes so that I get a little bit in every bite. You can use Yukon Gold potatoes or even russets for this recipe. Russets, are the starchiest potato, so keep in mind that they will make the chowder thicker, and you may want to keep additional stock on hand to thin the chowder to your liking later.Seasonings: There’s a variety of seasonings that spices that we use in homemade chowder. We’ll start with the obvious salt and black pepper. The most important one being a seafood seasoning, such as old bay. I also add crushed fennel. Seafood loves the licorice flavor of fennel and the lemony flavor of dried thyme both work so well in the chowder! There’s also a couple of bay leaves and some dried basil. You could also sprinkle in some fresh or dried dill or chives if you’d like. I usually leave those out and prefer it without any of the green stuff on top!Diced tomatoes: If you’re making this in the summer, you can certainly use roughly 12-14 ounces of fresh diced tomatoes, I usually have a can of diced tomatoes on hand and just went for that.Stock: Seafood, chicken, or even shrimp stock works here. We’ll boil the potatoes and everything else in the stock so use one that you like the flavor of. Some readers have mentioned swapping a portion of the stock for clam juice too.Tomato paste: The paste adds a nice deep tomatoey flavor to the chowder and also gives it a pretty blush color!Capers + brine: Capers and brine add a bit of zing to the chowder, which cut through the richness of the heavy cream and cream cheese.Heavy cream + cream cheese: Both are used to add a creamy richness to the chowder.Seafood: I use two types of protein in this chowder recipe. I use salad shrimp (or you can use larger cooked shrimp that you just diced up) along with diced cold-smoked salmon in the recipe. I find it’s way more satisfying with the two different types of seafood.