This New England Clam chowder is easy to make and just as delicious as the kind you get at a restaurant.

Who doesn’t love a hot bowl of New England Clam Chowder on a cold winter night? This dish features a rich creamy broth filled with vegetables and clams. I love to make this recipe for my family when we’re craving something savory and warm.

The best part about thick soups like this is it’s so customizable. You can make the broth more or less thick, depending on your liking. I prefer a looser broth to a heavier broth, since I like the focus to be on the ingredients in the soup. A thick broth really distracts from New England Clam Chowder and often just tastes like you’re eating flour.

Ingredients:

Clams: Without the clams, you will make a potato soup! Grab a can of roughly minced clams (or whole clams and mince them yourself) and don’t forget to add that clam juice into the soup instead of down the drain!
Potatoes: Use a russet or other white potato. It will add to the heartiness of the soup.
Bacon: Frying up bacon before adding in the other ingredients will not only give you some bacon fat to fry the veggies in, but it will also give a much needed saltiness to the broth. Want to make this without bacon? Just use some neutral cooking oil instead of bacon fat and you can skip the bacon altogether.
Roux: Making a roux out of flour and broth and then adding it to the chowder will thicken the soup nicely.
Aromatics: Onions, celery and garlic all a beautiful flavor to the soup. Cook these down in a bit of oil or bacon fat before adding the broth.
Broth: Adding a low-sodium chicken broth to your soup will allow you to make it as salty and creamy as you want.

How to Make Clam Chowder

This is an easy one-pot recipe that can be made in about 30 minutes. My preferred way to make soups like this is to throw everything into the dutch oven in “layers”.

Start with frying your bacon, and once it’s cooked, transfer to a separate plate but leave the bacon grease in your pot. Add your diced onions, garlic and celery and sautee in the bacon fat and then start adding the remaining ingredients.

After your veggies have cooked down and caramelized a bit, add in the stock and cream and add in the potatoes. Boil the potatoes until tender. Then add in the milk, Worcestershire sauce, and the slurry (a mixture of water and flour). Once warmed through, add the clams.

You can let the soup simmer on the stove until it’s ready to serve or you can turn the heat off.

What to Serve with New England Clam Chowder

When serving clam chowder, there are many options when deciding what to serve it with. Bread such as sourdough, biscuits or focaccia are always a popular side dish. If you have leftover potatoes you can always bake rosemary potatoes as to not waste any potatoes from the clam chowder.

You can also serve baked zucchini fries or pizza as a side for this soup.

More Soup Recipes

Looking for other soup recipes? Try some of the ideas listed below