Recipes & Lore • The Chowder Question

Rhode Island Clear Chowder

New England argues about chowder the way other regions argue about barbecue, and Rhode Island holds the minority position with total confidence: clear. No cream, no tomatoes — just quahog broth, potatoes, onions, a little pork fat, and a lot of clam. The theory is simple: if you can't taste the quahog through the dairy, why did you dig the quahog?

The full battlefield, for out-of-staters: white (creamy New England style — fine, ubiquitous, not ours), red (tomato-based; Manhattan gets blamed, but Rhode Island has its own beloved red lineage — the chowder served at Rocky Point was famously in the red family), and clear — the Rhode Island original, the oldest of the three styles, and the one this page is about. Families hold positions on all three. We're not here to mediate.

Method

1. Steam whole quahogs open in 4 cups of water; strain and keep every drop of that broth — it is the chowder. Chop the meat.
2. Render the pork in a soup pot; soften the onion and celery in the fat.
3. Add potatoes, bay leaf, thyme, and broth; simmer ~15 minutes until the potatoes are just tender.
4. Add the clams and simmer 5 minutes, no more — long-boiled clams turn to erasers.
5. Black pepper, parsley, done. If your hand drifts toward the cream or the tomatoes, this was never the recipe for you. Serve with clam cakes for dunking — the correct and only accompaniment.

Sources & further reading

• National Geographic — the clam cake & chowder pairing
• Wikipedia — the hard clam (quahog)