How to Make Clam Chowder | Chef Jean-Pierre

Hi there friends, another fantastic video today. I just made clam chowder. I'm going to share the recipe with you. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and ring that bell. We'll be right there making this amazing clam chowder. All right friends, well the first thing we're going to do is we're going to cook the clams and then we'll make the soup. Let's get going first with the clams. I got them right here, believe it or not, in Florida we got clams farm. Matter of fact, it's a Southern Cross Seafarm. It's in Florida. And whenever you buy clams, the store you buy them at has to keep this tag right there. That shows you when they were picked. Those were picked two days ago. So super fresh. Okay. And we're going to cook them. And the first thing we do is we're going to give them a bath. I give them a bath in water, friends. I get them. I got them this morning and they were picked two days ago. I already washed them four or five times. You wash them in water, you brush them. You wash them in water, you brush them. And then you put them in a cooler. And then no, not in water. Don't put them in water. Let them be dry and brush them again and put them more in water and wash them and wash them and wash them and wash them again. And every time they're going to release some sand, the sand is a key thing that we don't want. We don't want sand in there, friends. So we'll show you a way to get rid of it just in case you have it. Okay. A little shallots, little garlic. It looks like a lot of garlic, but you know, we're going to be poaching it. We're going to be making clam juice. Instead of buying the clam juice, we're going to make our own clam juice. Now you can certainly buy clam juice out there. There is a lot of clam juice and there's a lot of clams you can buy in the can. And I've never used them, but a lot of people do. So fresh thyme, garlic and shallots. This is their last bath. So we've got to take good care of them. If it's your last meal, you better make sure it's not. You know what we're going to do? We're going to be real nice with them. We're going to give them some wine. There you go. Measure carefully. I use a beautiful Chardonnay and we're going to put it in here. I like a lot of clam juice. If you don't mind, I might as well. And you know, I don't like to use water. So you see a lot of people cooking things in water. We don't really like to cook things in water. So remember, don't be afraid to ask for the tag when you go to retail places. And what we're going to do, we're going to bring them to boil. We're going to bring this to boil. And as soon as it's boiling, we're going to put the clams in there and we're going to poach them. That's the best way. You do the same with mussels. Same exact deal with mussels. We're going to wait for this to boil and then we're going to put them in there and we're going to give them a full bath. They're going to be very happy. And as soon as they open, we're going to take them out. We don't want to overcook. Otherwise they get tough. All right. We're going to wait for this to boil. Okay, friends. Oh, I forgot to say for those of you that don't want to cook in wine, then cook in broth, like a vegetable broth or a chicken broth, but no water, please. No water. Okay. Water and clams is a terrible thing. So we put them in there. Remember, rinse them, rinse them, rinse them and put a cover on it. We want to steam them. That's why I like this glass cover, because as soon as they come to boil, I remove them so they don't overcook. So we'll be back in a minute when they start to open. All right. We want to maybe check them. And the best thing to do is just this. That's all you need. Don't need to do much. Just check them like this. You don't want to lose that steam, friends. Don't want to lose that steam. They're starting to open. I hope they all open at the same time so that we don't overcook them. All right, friends. I am going to remove the one that I've already cooked. We don't want to overcook them. Otherwise they get tough, you know. We're losing the steam, but we're going to remove all the one that I've already opened so we don't overcook them. And they should all pretty much cook at the same time, my friends. Open at the same time. So if they don't open, they continue. We don't mix them around. Let's remove the one that I've cooked. I have to leave them a little bit longer, but at least I don't overcook the one that I opened. Smells amazing, my friends. This is very exciting. This is great stuff right there, my friends. I'm going to continue doing that without boring you because we've got plenty more to do. And we're going to finish them in a minute. I'm going to wait for a few seconds. All right, friends. If those are not opening, there's a good chance that they were dead. And if they're dead, we're not opening. We're not frying them open. Now we're going to make the juice. We're going to make the juice. Very important, we have sand in the bottom. We've got to get rid of the sand. First thing we do is we drain. We drain this in a fine mesh strainer. All right, first thing we do, we go into a fine mesh strainer first. And we don't want to get too much. I probably have everything in the front here. Let me see if I can do it better so you guys can see. And we're going to leave all that sand in there, friends. We've got a little bit of sand in the bottom. OK, but that's not enough to get rid of the sand. That's step one. And what I like to do, friends, I use a chinois. A chinois is a fine mesh. It's hot. I have a fine mesh strainer. If you don't have a fine mesh strainer, this is called a chinois because it's supposed to look like a chinois means the Chinaman in French. I don't know why the French people call this a chinois, but that's what it's called. And probably because it looks like a Chinaman hat. I don't know. I don't know. So look. And then what we're going to do, friends, we are now going to strain this beautiful golden liquid right there. Trust me, this has nothing to do with the clam juice you buy in the bottle. Nothing, not even close. So we're going to go to the end, to the end. And you can see at the end, look at all that sand right there, friends. See right there. We don't want that. All right. This, all this is going to the garbage. We're going to strain it right there. And there's nothing, nothing, nothing came out. No more sand. If you can do it one more time. If you're not sure, do this one more time. You have yourself beautiful clam juice right there, my friends. Then, then it's amazing. Okay. Think about it, right? They release their liquor. They release their beautiful juice. You make this and I promise you, you don't buy the, you're going to need a fine mesh strainer. If you don't have one of those, you can get one of those. You know, the fine mesh one, the fine mesh strainer, not the single mesh, the double mesh or triple mesh strainer. Okay. Those are really, really important friends. Chinois helps you do perfect or cheesecloth, but you got to really strain it. Now what we're going to do with those, we're going to, we're going to cut them in, in two, two pieces. They're small, so they don't need to be cut that much. Maybe one piece, you cut them in half or you can leave them whole. Those are very small clams. So, and I like them small, smaller. They are more tender. They are bigger. They are more chewy. They are. So for a clam chowder, I like them to be nice and tender. You can leave them whole or you can chop them up. All right. We're going to clean all this up. Then, then we got our clams. We're going to save some of it for decoration. And then we're going to put them in a bowl. And now we have our main ingredient for the soup. All right. So we're going to clean all this up and we're going to start making the soup together. Okay. Okay. Friends, it smells amazing already. I got the bacon going and I'm going to use the bacon fat to saute my onion. I'll take to you, I'll talk to you about the mise en place in a minute, but let me first do this phrase so that I can relax a little bit. I'm going to take the bacon out. I want to get a little caramelized. I don't want it to be too golden brown. Okay. By the way, for those of you that don't like bacon, um, oh, don't use bacon because you probably would like it if you were to use it. Um, but because you, you can't have it for whatever reason, it doesn't matter. I totally understand it. You can use Turkey bacon or you can just keep it. All right. Don't worry about it. Just keep it. You don't have to replace it. You know, what do I replace it with? Nothing. You can't replace bacon with nothing. Don't worry. All right. Now put some onion in there. I got, that looks like a lot, right? It's only two onions. Two onions, I'm telling you. Those onions are huge. We saute the onion, get it really golden brown. Let's reduce that heat just a little bit so I don't burn them too much. We're going to get them onion golden brown. Let me talk a little bit my friends. This is a lot going on, but maybe one day I'll make a really quick recipe, but right now there's just a lot going on. Okay. It's just the way it is. Sometimes soups are a lot, you know, but they are amazing because you can make a lot and you can freeze them. All right. So I got about a half a pound of bacon right there, right there. We're going to put it in later in the cook. We got about a couple of cups of celery, a couple of small mirepoix right there and the carrots and the celery right to those two. Then we got six, seven garlic cloves, fresh dill, that's going to be the flavor, bell peppers. Look at this. That was 200 clams, friends. 200 clams. Look what they reduced down to nothing. I saved a few of them for decoration over there, but really nothing. So that's amazing. And so I buy a whole bag of 200 clams and those are little necks. They're little guys. Like I said, I like them better because they taste better when they're little. So I don't want the onion to be too golden brown. I wanted them to be translucent. That's all I'm really interested in it. And now we're going to put the celery and we're going to put the carrots. All right. Put the celery and the carrots and we're going to let this cook for a minute. Now we're going to make a roux, my friends. Right there. We're going to make a roux. All right. And a roux is butter and flour. Okay. Butter and flour and very simple. Butter and flour. I got six ounces of, of, of butter right there. Sweet butter. I always use sweet butter for those of you that are asking what's a sweet butter. It's not that there's sugar in it. It's a, it doesn't have any salt in it. So we call it sweet butter and then we'll put the flour in there, friends. And this is a cup of flour. All right. So we're going to make a roux and we want to make a soft roux. You don't want to make a dry, hard roux. Okay. And this is what we're getting. You see? Very simple. Very simple. See, as long as you whisk it in really good, my friends, you're in good shape. You see? I think I could add another quarter cup of flour, but I'm out of flour. So I'm going to need somebody to bring me some flour. I know we have a couple of people here that are very good, responsible, that can bring me a whole container of flour. So I can figure out what to put. Here it is. Flour just up here. I love my life. Hey, hold on a minute. I got to get a measurement because I want to give you a measurement guys. Because everybody say you never, you never give us measurements. So I'm trying to give you measurements. Look, I'm measuring, measuring another quarter cup, another quarter cup of flour. And that's what I want. I want a little dry of a roux and I got it right there. You see? All right. How are we doing over here? We're doing good. This is like a intense recipe. You got to have your mise en place ready, my friends. Okay. We've got the roux. Now we've got the milk right there, friends. Okay. And we're going to start adding the milk. I'll show you. You can add hot milk. It goes faster, but cold milk will do just as fine. So you don't have one extra pot to clean again. I'm trying to figure out a way to cook with not so many pots. You know, being a professional chef my whole life, sometimes we don't pay attention to how many pots we use. And now that I'm retired, I understand the pain. Then the dishwasher that we're working with me must have fed like all those years. I had this guy that worked for me for 25 years at the restaurant, 23 years at the restaurant, John Goldin. That guy was a genius. He was amazing. Stayed with me for 23 years and he didn't care how many pots I dirty. He said, chef, whatever you need, he was a wonderful, wonderful person. All right. John Goldin, may you rest in peace. All right, my friends. We're looking good. We're looking good. Okay. So this is good. We're going to wait until this thickens because see the cold milk doesn't thicken right away. So you'll see in a minute what's going to happen here, friends. Let's put some heat in there. Okay. All right. So now we put the garlic in there, little chopped garlic. You can put as much or as little garlic as you want. When we put garlic, that means we're getting ready to put something wet, bell peppers. Remember the garlic, how long do we cook it for? We cook it until it smells. Okay. The deal, we're going to wait till the end. We're going to put this together. I'm just making sure. See, look. See, look, guys, it's going to start. It's going to start to thicken. I want it to be smooth as silk. By the time I put it in here, I want it to be smooth as silk. We're not putting it in there. And also friends, I have some vegetable broth or chicken broth, whatever you want to put in your soup. Okay. It's up to you. All right. Here we go. See, as the milk is starting to get hot, this is starting to thicken and we want to cook this. We want to give it a little time to cook, friends. All right. So we're looking good. It's starting to smell, which is so important. And I got about three cup of diced potatoes, three cup of diced potatoes. I wash them and wash them and wash them carefully to get rid of the extra starch so it doesn't interfere with my thickening. And the thicken, I like the soup to thicken to use some of the starch of the potatoes to thicken. Some people don't like it. That's their prerogative. I don't mind. Okay. So here we go, friends. All right. You notice I got some tomatoes in there. This is tomato concasse. What's the tomato concasse? The tomato that we took the time to peel and seeded. You don't have time to do that. Just take some cherry tomatoes or take a can of tomatoes and chop them up and you'll be perfectly fine, my friends. Don't worry. But if you have time, you want to do a concasse. It's really nice. All right. So look, we're getting thick now. You notice we're getting thick. So now we're going to continue mixing this because we want it to be smooth as silk. Smooth is what we're looking for, friends. And let me put the whole milk in there and let's see how smooth I can get. It's got to be smooth. I don't want to put some lumpy stuff in there. See, it's looking good so far. Well, let's see what happens. After this, we're going to add some stock. So I got four cups of milk in here. And if it gets too thick on me, I'm going to put some stock in there. Okay. I'm going to put stock anyway. Now you notice I haven't put any salt and pepper yet, but don't worry. I got it under control. Salt and pepper as you add as little or as much as you want. That's really a matter of opinion. It's getting thick. Okay. So we want to put one cup of broth and we're going to continue adding a little bit at a time. Okay. That's the beautiful thing about cooking, folks. You can measure all you want, but it's nice to see what it is you're doing and understand what it is you're doing. You don't want to put in here too much liquid because then you will have to bring it up. And nothing wrong with that, though. If we have a soup that's too thin, it's no problem to put a little bit of cornstarch or arrowroot or tapioca powder. A bunch of thickener you can use that are wonderful. Okay. One more. One more. It's all we're probably going to put more than that, but right now I just want to mount it. I'm mounting it. Put it together. Remember, it's all about the tongue. I don't want a soup too liquid or I don't want to put a soup too thick. It has to stay on the tongue long enough. If it's too thick, you think like you're eating mashed potatoes. If it's too thin, it doesn't stay on your tongue, on your mouth long enough for you to enjoy the flavor, my friends. All right. So look, we're going to cook this. We're going to bring it to boil and we're going to put it in here and then we're going to see how much stock we're going to add. Okay. All right. Smooth as silk. So we go in, we go right in. Now you understand why it was important to put it in different pots. Some people say, how come you don't do it in the same pot? You can do it in the same pot if you want. But let me tell you, it's a lot easier to do it like this. A lot easier to do it this way, my friend. All right. So now let's mix all this up and yeah, we're getting there, we're getting there. And now let's put in our stock, our broth. We're going to put one, we're going to put two and we're going to put our tomatoes. You don't want to put tomatoes that much? Don't put them in. I love them. I think they give you a beautiful color. I think they give you a nice, really fresh flavor. It's really up to you, my friends. And then we're going to put in more stock. We're going to keep putting more stock until we got the right texture. That's why I always have a big pot. We write the recipe exactly how many we put in. That's exactly one cup right there. This is an eight ounce ladle. So to make it easy, we're going to continue mixing all this. I wanted to show you, by the way, I told you it's only two onions, but look how big they are. I got some more cream in here that I may add till the end to give it a little more creaminess. And of course, the star of the show, the clam juice. We're going to wait just a little bit. We're going to bring this to boil and we're going to adjust the texture as we go. I love it, love it, love it, love it. We're going to have to put more, but let's first put the clam juice in there. And the clam juice is our liquid gold. This is our liquid gold, friends. This is, trust me, after you make your own clam juice, you'll never again buy one in the can, in a jar, whatever they come in. Just make sure you're checking the bottom to make sure there's no sand in it, but which I strained at enough time. I still don't want to put it all the way to the end, just in case. There's no reason to do it. All we're going to do now is bring it to boil, put our bacon back on there. That was hot. And this, my friends, is going to need to cook very slowly for about 45 minutes. And that's why we don't want to put the clams in there now. And then we'll adjust at the end with a little cream. And I'm also going to put a little bit of sherry in there and make it even much better. And that's it. So we'll be back in about 45 minutes, clean up everything and we'll finish it up and I'll show you the perfect texture. OK, we'll be back in a few minutes. OK, friends, well, we cooked about 45 minutes to an hour. This is all your vegetables going to be nice and tender. I just want to let you know, though, I just did so we don't wait. I had a two cup of cream. I had a heavy whipping cream. All right. So now let's talk a little bit about texture. It's all about texture. Remember, friends, it's about that tongue. You've got to take care of it. If you look at it right I'd rather be too liquid than too thick. If I'm too thick, I got to put more stock. There's nothing wrong with it. I don't matter if you're thick or thin. We know how to fix it. If it's too thick, we put more stock. If it's too thin, we got to bring it up. So here we go. All right. Bring it up. How do we bring it up? Well, first, let's make sure we got everything. Let's put our clams in there. Let's get them hot. Let's put our dill in there, friends. Fresh dill. I don't like to cook dill that much. It's not one of those herbs that is so happy to cook. OK, so we don't cook it so much. OK, but we're still looking to liquid and we're about to look a little bit more liquid. I'm going to put a little bit of Harvey's Bristol cream. Measure carefully. You don't have to put that in there. You don't have to put it in. You don't have to do nothing. OK. Oh, yeah, baby. So we're still too liquid. The smell and the cherry. Yeah, I'm telling you, this is really you know, it's so very good. Also, if you if you like a little anise flavor in there, you could put a little Sambuca or you could put a little Pernod or a little bit of anise flavor. It's also delicious. The very little. OK, I promise you, it's really delicious. So what do we do now? We're going to thicken it, my friends, because it's too thin. It's too thin. And I'll show you. I'll show you. Let me get a spoon. Let me get a spoon. OK, look, it's too thin. This is not what it is we want. We want thickness. OK, it's really important. So I got cornstarch diluted in water. How much do you want? Well, you got to bring it to boil. Make sure this is boiling before you do that. The minute it's boiling, then you can add your cornstarch. If you add cornstarch to a cold mixture, it doesn't work. You know, it's like when you're making your roux and you put in cold milk. It's got to take a time to cook a little bit. Right. So let's make sure we're boiling. We're boiling on the side. We're boiling on the side. I'm not so sure we're boiling. Yeah, we're good. We're good. Yeah, we're good right there. OK, so now we're going to put our cornstarch. How much do we put in? Well, we've got to be careful because we could put too much if we put too much. That's why I got the stock right there, just in case I put too much. OK, it's got to have the right texture, my friends. You really, really have to have the right texture because this is all about the texture. We're getting there. We're getting there. Look, look, you can see it. All the vegetables are starting to float. You know, when they float, it's not the liquid. You see, you see, you can see it. Look at look at it. You see. Oh, yeah, baby. Oh, salt, salt, salt. I already put a little salt when you watching. OK, and I left it here just in case. That's really important. Also, look at this. That looks beautiful. Now, now you see what I'm talking about. Look at this. All right. I'm going to give it a test now. I want to give it a test because it's all about this. Oh, it's going to be hot. Wow. It's going to be very hot. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. Delicious, my friend. Mm hmm. All right. So what do we do now? It's time to eat it. It's time to eat it, my friend. Look, look how gorgeous that is. You see? Look at this. What do you think, my friends? I hope you like it as much as me. Look at this. It's very exciting. Look at this. Is that gorgeous or what? A little more. We think there's one more, one more right there. Right. OK, so now now I got the clams. You want to make a little decoration to make it look pretty, right? Don't make too much of a mess here, Jean-Pierre. Here we go. We're taking some clams right there and we'll put them in there just like this. It doesn't really matter how you put it, my friends. Let's put a couple of clams in there. You may want to dunk them in stock so they're nice and hot. Put them right there. Put a beautiful sprig of dill right there, my friends, and you have yourself an amazing clam chowder. God bless America. This is gorgeous. Look at this, my friend. Bon appétit. It tastes amazing. I hope you make it. Remember, thumbs up if you like the video. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel and ring that bell. We'll see you in the next few days with another fantastic video. This looks amazing. It tastes amazing. I'm going to turn the heat off and I'm going to sit down a huge bowl. Thanks for watching.