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[1403.11]
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:
- 15 minutes: you get "the grassy flavor of just-cooked cauliflower"
where "the punchy, cabbagelike taste and the sulfurous odor of a
compound known as carbon disulfide are dominant"
- 30 minutes: "carbon disulfide dissipates, allowing the sweeter, nuttier
flavors of other substances known as thioureas to break through"
- 60 minutes: "nearly all the flavor has dissipated,
leaving the cauliflower bland and flavorless"
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:
- Hondashi
is a bonito fish soup stock which can be used as a base for many Japanese
soups and dishes.
If you don't have it handy, you can substitute chicken broth.
- I use an immersion blender because it's much easier to use the
wand in the soup pot than to transfer the soup in multiple stages to a
blender and back, though using the blender is probably better if you want
to completely cream all the cauliflower.
Either way, be careful not to scald yourself!
- I have an ancient Waring immersion blender, which is more than 20 years
old but still going strong. If it did give out, I'd probably try
Cook's Illustrated's current
favorite immersion blender, from
KitchenAid.
- Some content on the
Cook's Illustrated website
is only available to subscribers. I subscribe to both the print magazine
and the website, although I wish the website were cheaper, since it's
not as enjoyable (it only gives a recipe's final result, and not
all the details of the story behind it), plus there is still some content
only available to subscribers who pay even more for premium or multi-site
access.
- I bake the salmon in a 300 degree oven on parchment paper (6 minutes on
each side, followed by 3 or so extra minutes for any thicker pieces
that seem like they need it). Then I use my
Foodsaver to freeze
portions for later use.
- Once you've started simmering the cauliflower, stir the pot often
to make sure it doesn't scorch or boil over (don't ask me how I know).
This article is part of the seeking42 recipe series.
