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LCHF Salmon Cauliflower Chowder

I like cauliflower, but it's a bit monotonous to eat a whole head steamed. I also wanted a way to use some of the 3 pounds of salmon you typically end up with when you buy fresh salmon at Costco. After looking at recipes for cauliflower soup, salmon-broccoli chowder, and broccoli-cheese soup, I came up with this recipe for salmon cauliflower chowder.
ingredients
  3T    butter
  1/4 C flour
  1C    half and half
  1C    2% milk
  4C    fish stock (4C water and 6t hondashi)
  1/2   head of cauliflower (core thinly sliced, the rest in 1/2" pieces)
  6oz   cooked salmon, chunked
  6oz   grated cheese
        salt and pepper

1. Melt butter in soup pot over medium-low heat.  Add flour and cook for
   about a minute.
2. Increase heat to medium-high.  Add half and half, whisking until smooth.
3. Add milk and fish stock.  Add cauliflower core slices and half of the
   remaining cauliflower.  Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Add other half of cauliflower and simmer for another 15 minutes.
5. Use an immersion blender (or process soup in blender) until desired
   smoothness.
6. Add salmon and cheese. Stir until smooth and heated through. Add salt
   and pepper to taste.
Makes about six 12 ounce servings, each about 375 calories, 22 grams protein, and 6 grams net carbs.

The cauliflower soup recipe is from Cook's Illustrated, a cooking magazine published by America's Test Kitchen. I love this magazine, and the cauliflower soup is a good example why. They develop their recipes from scratch, going through many interations to improve flavor, solve problems, and develop cooking and preparation methods, relating myriad details of what they discover along the way. For example, in the cauliflower soup recipe, they found that cooking time dramatically changes the flavor of cauliflower:

With that in mind, I followed their method of cooking the first half of the cauliflower for 15 minutes before adding the second half to cook for another 15 minutes. I didn't follow their recipe completely, because they were developing a soup that was creamy without adding cream, and I definitely wanted cream in my LCHF recipe.

Other notes:

This article is part of the seeking42 recipe series.

If you wish to comment on this post, see the companion blogspot entry.


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