A hearty chowder.
This one's got a bit of a Cajun spin to it.
I started the pot with half a pound of meaty bacon.
I was eating it the entire commercial break
so there's a little less than half a pound at this point
and now I've got a pot filled with large shrimp
that I've just taken the color off.
Oh, I forgot my Old Bay.
I love Old Bay on shrimp, mm mm.
Yeah.
It's better with the Bay.
All right, so we pull the shrimp out
'cause we don't want it to cook all the way.
We don't want it to get overcooked.
So I just take the color off and put 'em out
and let 'em hang out with bacon.
I know, I'm in already.
It's shrimp and bacon.
Now, buy your shrimp in the shell and here's why.
I take the shells off, devein the shrimp
and then I toast the shells in a pot, just brown 'em up
and they'll get really fragrant
and then you add a quart of chicken stock
and it makes a fortified shrimp stock.
It's delicious.
So that's what's bubbling over here.
This is a quart of bone stock, chicken bone stock
or bone broth, right,
and it's bubbling away with those toasted shrimp shells
and it smells glorious.
Now, into the bacon drippings at the bottom of our pot,
we're gonna add the trinity,
the trinity plus some potatoes for our chowder
and I put garlic in everything
so I'm gonna throw some garlic in too
and salt and pepper of course
and a little garlic or a lot.
I just grate it right down in there.
Give that a spin.
Oh.
And then we throw in our taters
and a bay leaf
and then we're gonna let this sweat
and cook all together in the hot tub
and then we're gonna add
some fire-roasted corn kernels from the freezer
or you could throw a couple of ears of corn on the grill
when it's in season of course.
Now we're gonna build the liquids into our chowder here.
It's a Cajun style chowder
so we're gonna put in a fat amount of Frank's Red Hot
and we're gonna put in a little Worcestershire.
Oh, that smells so sexy, mm,
and then we're gonna take our toasted shrimp shell stock,
add about a quart of that
and then we're gonna take our shrimp and our bacon
and add a cup of heavy cream
and we're gonna let that hang for a couple minutes.
I forgot to tell ya to throw the corn in there too
but I did and the audience was watching me
while we were watching the pot waiting for it to boil
but we've got it up to a nice bubble now.
Look how good that looks with the corn
and the bacon and the potatoes and all them shrimp
in our spicy chowder sauce.
Yum yum yum.
Yes.
I know.
Look at that, dang.
(applause)
Now, I love to put crushed old school saltine crackers
all over it, right, and then a little bit of chives.
Yes.
I love chives on chowder
and I like a little extra hot sauce on mine too
with the crackers.
Yes.
(applause)