Recipe: Maine Lobster Chowder | Andrew Zimmern

I love seafood chowders and stews, regardless of where they originate. Seafood meals in a bowl are a global thrill for me. Growing up on the water in New York, Manhattan clam chowder was my first love. Japanese seafood nabe became my second because my father introduced it to me in the early 70’s when the first Japanese restaurants opened in our neighborhood. I make a dozen different types of seafood meals in a bowl, all of which are on my website from Cioppino to a Scallop Pan Roast.

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Andrew Zimmern is an Emmy-winning and four-time James Beard Award-winning TV personality, chef, writer and passionate global citizen. As the creator, executive producer and host of the Bizarre Foods franchise, Andrew Zimmern’s Driven by Food, What’s Eating America, Emmy-nominated Family Dinner, Wild Game Kitchen, Field to Fire and the Emmy-winning The Zimmern List, he has devoted his life to exploring and promoting cultural acceptance, tolerance and understanding through food. Andrew is the founder and chairman of Intuitive Content, named one of the top 100 production companies in the world, and Passport Hospitality, a restaurant and food service development company. He sits on the boards of Services for the UnderServed, EXPLR Media, Soigne Hospitality, Giving Kitchen, Beans is How and The Great Northern. Andrew is a Global Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations World Food Programme and The Nature Conservancy, and is the International Rescue Committee’s Voice for Nutrition.

my ode to the great state of Maine lobster chowder with a nice little piece of buttered toast some chives and parsley and tagan this my friends inspired by Maine week a state that I adore how do we make this in three two one I’m going to show you how the first step in this process is to dispatch our lobsters these are live lobsters i have three of them omarus Americanis otherwise known as the main lobster the North Atlantic lobster this is a beauty i pound and a half in general kind of works for me not too big so none of the meat is tough small enough so it fits in conventional pots and pans and you have to dispatch them and there’s a couple ways that you can do that so the humane way to do it if you really have problems with it is just put them in the freezer for 25 minutes they go to sleep and then you can put them right into boiling water or you can place the knife right in this groove behind the eyes and before the tail starts it’s about halfway down you can kind of see that there’s a line there if you place your knife right in front of that groove and put it through it instantly euthanizes them now some people have a problem with that that’s fine use the freezer method what I do is whatever box they come in or box that I have you know in the garage or you know even a cardboard lid of some kind is place them in that and then plunge the knife through and by the way you can put a towel over the lobster even paper toweling so that if you don’t have to look at it um I don’t i just need something to catch any liquid that comes out of them right makes sense the other thing that I want to do is put about an inch and a half of water in a big pot put a metal steaming basket in it so the lobsters don’t go in the water i prefer steaming the lobsters for a couple of minutes before I start to break them down when I’m making uh chowters uh salads anytime I want to extract the meat but I also want to save the intense flavor of the shells for a stock or soup so which knife do you think is best to dispatch a lobster a 12 inch knife a eight and a half inch knife or something smaller and sharper you guessed it right something smaller and sharper a big knife on a round hard wet surface that’s a little slippery is not going to do the job in fact you may miss the target or worse hit your opposing hand so use a small sharp uh knife uh like this one that’s this is what a petty knife is really really ideally suited for i use a small hand towel because the lobsters themselves are slippery right so I just put those around the tip of the head cuz I still want to see where I need to place my knife and I want to hold those claws down there’s a rubber band on them but I just want to I don’t want them to flail around i take my petty knife right blade away from me and I put it right down into the middle of the head one quick motion withdraw the knife and then this can go right into my steamer pot i take another lobster i’m actually going to use three for this and the reason that I’m going to use three and so far I have two males which is unfortunate because I love the the row when it comes to making a uh chowder and the reason that I’m making a chowder with three lobsters is I mean you can do it with one uh but if I’m going to go through the trouble of making a dish like this I definitely want Oh there’s a female i wonder if she’ll have eggs we’ll see i definitely want to make a big boy batch it freezes well and that’s super super super important to me cook once eat many many times this is going to be delicious that pot behind me has got the lobsters i like to start it in cold water and when that inch of cold water that’s below the steamer comes to a boil I turn it off and let it sit for a minute or two and then I rinse the lobsters under cold water so that I can handle them better they’ll still be medium rare inside but you can shell them and you still have a lot of flavor in the shells and the head which I need to make the foundational flavor uh for the chowder lay a couple of towels down to absorb liquid that comes out of the lobster while you’re cleaning it it’ll really help you when it comes to restoring the kitchen to order shall we say i have a container here for the lobster meat so I can after I’m done shucking it I can put all the meat into the refrigerator i do not have a container for the shells why do I not have a container for the shells because the pot behind me I’m going to put some oil in and some aromatics and some tomato paste and we’re going to scorch the shells in that pot which I cleaned after steaming the lobsters in them uh so the shells will just go right in to that pot some liquid will be there that’s fine so let me show you how to break down a lobster it’s super super easy and again remember this one is just medium rare on the inside but it’s the same if you’re doing a cooked lobster for lobster rolls let me lower the the camera here so you can see it and move some of my stock out of the way and some of my dry seasonings the first thing that uh I do and you can do this over the container is just take the claws off they just twist right off like that the next thing that I do is I simply twist the tail out of the head and I don’t know but there’s probably about a tablespoon or so of lobster juice already in the bottom there and I just take the the other part of that out so now I have the two claws and I have the tail sitting in front of me and I’m left with the head and what I want to do now is probably the most important part of making lobster chowder lobster bisque anything using lobster shells and that is I want to remove these thready lungs that are on the sides of the lobster body super super super important because when they cook inside the lobster they can get very bitter they also soak up liquid unnecessarily and this is probably one of the more important things to do you can just they just come right off in your fingers they’re just attached to the shell make sure you get all of them and then you have this interior of the lobster body that has all of these legs on it and I just want to break these legs right off the lobster body and with a small lobster like this one you can just break the body apart into a couple of pieces this carropus this shell right here doesn’t have a lot of flavor in it however the head which is here has a ton of flavor in it but I remove this little head sack that also has some bitter flavors and I take this part of the lobster and I put it in there as well i also have all the tamalei in there that’s such good flavor and I put this here now what do I do with this carropus it’s kind of empty you can crack it into pieces i just find the the smaller the pieces are the better and then I can take this entire thing and dump it into my pot then I come back over here and I twist these tail pieces these fans that are on the back end of the lobster throw those into my pot and then I can see the meat in here is still a little bit raw in the middle it’s perfect it’s not overcooked cuz it’s going to heat up in that broth or that lobster chowder we’re going to add it at the end um so I just crack it and then peel just spread it with my fingers there push this through and I’ve got this delicious piece of lobster tail i’ve got these pieces of the shell i’m just going to crack this with my fingers whoop and put this into our pot as well so now I’ve got my meat going in there and I’m going to do the same thing there’s always a lot of liquid in the shells and in the knuckles dripping out of there slip the bands off we don’t need those anymore slip off this hard shell and drop that into one side and I give that a nice shake because you can see lots of liquid comes out of there i want that liquid right so I’m just going to stand that up and I’m going to do the same process with this other piece just jiggle jiggle jiggle right cuz I want those beautiful pieces every piece of lobster meat on there is important to me and then this is fairly soft however it’s hard enough that if I crack it and thick enough that I risk cutting my fingers and you can get a really bad cut from that so just place it here and give it a whack with the back of your knife and when you do that it breaks apart in pieces and you can extract a perfect piece of claw meat and I’ll lay that on top of my tail with the knuckles just break them into pieces you can actually push the pieces of meat through with your fingers and these shells and the connective tissue that’s with them has so much yummy meat on them and this piece just comes out like that and we just lather rinse repeat and it’s an easy easy easy process with every piece of the shell with every piece of the lobster meat and I just do the same thing that I did with those other pieces of lobster shell i just put this into my pot now this is always the one that everyone says “Oh how do I get through that really big claw?” Same thing a nice firm whack right and this shell comes right off i want to make sure that I don’t get that all mixed up with my meat sometimes you give it a whack on the other side and you can extract the entire claw right there and because you’ve only cooked it just to medium rare some of those internal bones will come right out as well so now I have the meat of one lobster in here whoops i have the meat of one lobster in here the shells and the tail and the knuckles the liquid from inside the lobster which is really really important for this i’m just going to set that aside and I’m going to repeat that with my other lobster okay my third lobster here was the female and that black stuff there is the row the eggs they turn bright red right you can see that big rose sack there at the tail i want to save that because it makes such a nice garnish you can actually see on this one it’s starting to get a little red on that one edge remember I said it’s medium rare and the row goes all the way up the body of the lobster through the tail so let’s see what we have in here when we extract slide the tail out by the way a lot of people will tell you “Oh run a skewer through the tail.” Yes I do that when I want a straight lobster tail for like a presentation salad or something but not here i’m just dicing up it’s a wasted step i’m making chowder i’m not making a lobster salad for Eric repair all right now that we have everything separated we want to just cut our lobster meat and I like cutting the claws in thirds i leave the knuckles whole i mean it’s just very important to me that this be lobster chowder right i mean I’m not looking to have it be a delicious chowder that just has little shreds of meat in there so I’m just slicing the tail in oblique cuts which just means angling my knife sort of creating triangular pieces a little easier to eat anything that comes off I scrape into my container and then I have all of these juices at the bottom and some of the tamalei and I save that and it’s just going to get stirred into my soup at the uh last minute i’ve got my pot with all of my lobster shells and I’m just going to add a gug of olive oil i don’t like to add uh ground hot chilies to this because I don’t want it to be spicy but I’m going to add two whole chilies to this and the reason that I add two whole chilies to this is that if they’re left whole they’ll just make the the soup warm just with a little hint of spice i’m going to add a tablespoon of my lemon shallot seasoning it has freeze-dried shallots tagon thyme freeze-dried lemon peel in there not a lot just a little i really really love thyme and terrian in this so I’m going to add a tablespoon of really nice dried thyme from France while that’s getting in there I’m going to add the stems and the leaves of two sprigs of teragon i’m going to add two big spoonfuls of tomato paste the tomato paste is going to scorch and I’m actually rubbing this lobster on my back of my spoon just to get all that tomato paste off there it’s going to caramelize on the bottom of this pot once the liquid evaporates and we start to hear some sizzling so I have this on a medium heat and once I hear it sizzling I’m going to start to uh turn down the temperature to gently sweat and caramelize it next up I’m going to add some trimmings uh from the tops of my leaks i’m going to add the two ends of my onions right we’re just going to be cooking this and then straining this out after we add some liquids and then we’re going to cook the nice parts of the onions and leaks into our chowder so right now we’re just sweating this and I’m adding those ends to aromatize what’s going to be our really really strong lobster broth we’re going to add some celery later so I cut off the tips of these which are a little bruised and discolored and then I have the bottom the unusable part of the celery that’s going to aromatize that broth as well i’m going to add one carrot chopped up love that sweetness from the carrot and by the way I can now hear some sizzling going on which means a lot of moisture is evaporated not all of it but a lot of it once I stir it those shells are going to let out more moisture so I’m really going to let those shells kind of toast for a couple seconds there and then we’re just going to keep stirring this i don’t want to burn the tomato paste or burn any of the lobster pieces or the herbs the garlic or the onion because then that burnt flavor is going to dominate this lobster broth but I do want to toast and caramelize it so I have a stronger tasting broth so I’m just going to do that super carefully and you’ll see that in a couple minutes using one of my special spoons the one with the hole in it so I don’t splatter lobster stuff everywhere i’m going to start stirring this and the reason that I not to start stirring it I could smell toasty lobster aroma yep and look at that no more liquid there’s no liquid on the bottom there so we’re going to stir this up and the reason I’m stirring vigorously is I want that tomato paste to spread out in that lobster moisture and you can sort of see it on the bottom there right just kind of all becoming one and that’s going to help us caramelize it and shorten this process and it’s going to help me ensure that I don’t burn it that I just toast it and then the next step is going to be deglazing it with some brandy oh my gosh I forgot my shallot ends they were hidden underneath some of my leaks and tagon but these I have one shallot I’m going to mince and I put in this and I’m going to add those in there it’s very aromatic it’s very lobstery i can smell the herbs the teragon is coming out now we cook with all our senses including our hearing and I can hear the sizzle in here and I can now see some of that caramelization of the tomato paste actually scorched light brown tomato paste streaks on the bottom of this pot so let’s go in i’m just using you know a good brandy nothing super expensive and I’m gonna add I don’t know maybe a half [Music] cup and I’m gonna let that simmer till it’s almost evaporated it’s going to pull a lot of flavor out because it’s got al lot of alcohol in it it’s going to pull flavor out of our shells and we’re going to cook this until it’s almost dry and you might ask how do I catch it at just the right time and the answer is by adding some more liquid i’m going to add some wine get some of that acid from the wine and the alcohol in the wine will pull out flavors from the shells this takes a a minute or so all right so the brandy is almost evaporated i’m going to add probably a cup of white wine and I’m going to just raise the heat a little bit just so that I evaporate that a little faster and I’ll get my stocks ready that I’m going to add in here then we slap the lid on this thing and cook it for half an hour 45 minutes and get all the flavor out of that lobster the wine is almost evaporated entirely and the smell is just unbelievable because now the vegetables the lobster the herbs everything is cooking together and it just smells grand i’m going to add four cups of fish broth that was made from uh halibit and monkfish bones you can buy really good fish broth these days there’s a I think it’s or not French i think it’s Italian i think they’re Spanish called Anetto a N E T O that’s sold in a lot of specialty uh shops uh but they make a great one i’m going to add uh because it gives an umami elegance i have dashi here and I’m going to add about a cup of dashi but what you really will taste is a lot of umami i mean this is just going to weak of lobster uh when we’re done with it i don’t add clam juice it tends to be too strong but I do add and if you’ve been watching me cook over the years you know how much I’m always saving my bones and shells to make chicken stock fish stock and all the rest of that kind of stuff by the way fish stock shrimp stock all that stuff is on the website but I have a quart of shrimp broth and I’m just going to throw that into the party so I’ve got about 8 and 1/2 cups eight cups total and we’re going to bring that to a boil but it’s basically this is what we call enough broth or stock to cover and we’re going to cook this for a relatively short amount of time i mean I’ll let chicken broth go for 24 hours but I only want this or stock to go for like 24 hours i only want this to cook for about I’m just going to say 45 minutes from the time it starts uh strongly simmering to the time I I take it off and strain it because I don’t I want the lobster flavor to come out but I don’t want it to taste like iodine or shell and the secret to making fish stock with fishbones shrimp stock with shrimp shells lobster broth with different stocks and vegetables and things is to not overcook it and you can taste it like taste as you go that’s how you learn all about the flavor transfer there we have it let that come to a strong simmer you can see this coming to a strong simmer low boil uh whatever you want to call that the aroma is beautiful i didn’t burn anything so we’re going to stick the lid on there and we’re going to turn the heat down to something low so that we maintain a simmer i’ll peek at it in a couple of minutes just to make sure that it’s not too strong a simmer or too low a simmer just a nice light simmer and let it go for about 45 minutes so while that’s simmering let’s cut our vegetables first up those leaks split them give them a nice rinse i’m really glad happy to show you there’s dirt in between those leaves so you want to make sure that you rinse them so I’m going to cut these leak pieces and give them a nice little rinse before I chop them so I’m going to grab sort of three halves at a time and again I’m just using the whites and pale greens the section right above that is what I put in the stock and the dark green fibrous stuff at the top well that’s the stuff that I save for stocks and things like that you saw us use the tops and the bottom of the celery so I’m just cutting these celery spears into 1/4 inch pieces and what I’m shooting for here is you know a cup cup and a quarter of each vegetable leak carrot celery onion and shallot mixed these are some rinsed and washed carrots i’m just going to cut these into coins on an angle i love cutting vegetables for chowters into different shapes so we have half moons of leak we have square 1/4 in dice of celery and now I have this sort of ovaloid shape on the carrot it’s going to be a yummy chowder i can tell you that onion you know the usual and when I have both ends removed it’s easier just to make slices and again I’m mimicking the celery here and going for like you know a nice quarter inch dice on my onion and I’m going to do the same with my shallot let’s do a different shape i’ll just do thinly sliced that way people can bite down nice pieces of shallot we’re also going to finish this with chive so we have four aliums in here leaks onions garlic shallot and chive they all have different flavors all in the same family but all with different flavors that’s our bowl but wait there’s more can you have a chowder without potatoes i don’t think so these are some really beautiful and by the way you don’t need any potato will do but I happen to love tiny little new potatoes uh these are about the size of my thumbnail and um I’m just going to cut them in half that’s all we need to do to them they’ll cook in the same amount of time that all these other veg do but wait there’s more i want to put teragon in there a couple different ways i want the the taggan that’s in the broth right now but I’m also going to strip some leaves off of there so that I have that beautiful bright fresh teragon flavor in my chowder itself and I’m going to do the same thing with parsley we are building something incredible here well it’s a symphony so if you dump every single ingredient into a pot all at once and then right on up to the cream that’s coming later and the lobster pieces and you cook it and then you dump it into a bowl it’ll taste good but by layering the flavors at different times and duplicating some of them we are creating something symphonic a handful of bigger pieces of parsley just cut right off the top that’s going to go into our bowl with our veg but I do want to take few tablespoons of parsley chop it very finely and I’m going to use that with our chives to garnish this dish at the end little chopped parsley i have some nice chives from the market and then I’m just going to cut some really fine chives here a few tablespoons and I’m going to put them in there with my parsley and put a little damp paper towel on the top of it that’ll be a lovely garnish along with a pad of butter you heard me right a pad of butter well as Holmes always said to Watson the pot thickens well actually he used to say the plot thickens but I’m going to say the pot thickens because this is now ready to be turned off it’s been simmering for about 45 minutes we’re going to let it cool for a couple minutes then we’re going to taste it strain it and we’ll get on with the business at hand shall we all right so some people like to let this cool completely and then they put it in a blender i find that’s a a real problem some of the soft shells will puree right up but you know good luck getting a blender to not burn out if you’re grinding really big shells like that so what I like to do uh is use an immersion wand and this one is a pretty strong one uh from Vitamix but KitchenAid makes a great one brevel makes a great one and all you want to do is turn it on and get it to high and you just want to push down on some of those soft shells and vegetables i’m not going after everything i just run it along the bottom here and I now am stirring to avoid the big shells and that’s it with that simple action doubled the flavor new pot and I’m using that just cuz it’s big and I have a shininois here it’s named because it supposedly looks like a china cap it’s often called that i think we have to come up with a new name uh for these i I buy them when they’re on sale which is frequently i check Amazon get a good one that’s nice and strong and and really sturdy because that way you can press down on solids all we’re going to do is we’re going to take our stock and I’m going to uh scoop it in there in batches and press down in it and then just keep discarding the shells if you dump the whole thing in it’s going to spill all over and I just keep pouring liquid through here i’ll leave the the rest in there and you can see what’s come out of there kind of looks like lobster bisque except it’s thinner than that but it’s just got that incredible aroma use a sturdy spoon whatever you like i’m a real big fan of pressing down on the solids uh but be prudent about that at a certain point you just got to be smart and stop right you don’t want to break your shinas you don’t want to get anything you know push through the the screen that doesn’t belong in there like shell and we just keep [Music] adding more liquid and shell to this party we get a nice steady stream and then I can push down on this and really extract everything beautifully beautifully strained that right there is stunning wipe your spoon off so you don’t get any shell in there and give it a taste wow perfect no bitterness at all i now have put a little bit of a low flame underneath it i’m going to put a little bit you know just like a 1/4 teaspoon or so of lemon juice in just to brighten it up we’re going to quickly flash sauté our veg and put that in there we’ll start seasoning it eventually after 20 minutes when all the vegetables are tender including the potatoes we’ll add our lobster which we’ll put another remember cup and a quarter of lobster juice back in there so if we have some reduction now we’re going to not lose anything in volume at the end but the reduction now will just intensify the flavor a little bit so we don’t mind simmering so earlier we talked about building layers of flavor put a tablespoon and a half of butter in that pan if I dump the vegetables into the broth right now and simmered it it would taste good the finished product but it’s going to taste great because I’m going to add all of this veg and sauté it kind of give it a little hard sear in this butter right here and then that’s going to go into the soup when we simmer it and we are really going to make some high impact deliciousness right here butter is foaming let’s go in there with all of our veg sprinkle that with a little bit of salt season that with a little pepper we’ll season the soup later on but I’m just I’m seasoning the veg we did not put salt in the broth we don’t want to season the soup until the end this is already smelling awesome so again the reason I’m putting a a nice sear on this veg is layers of flavor layers of flavor layers of flavor but I’m not I’m not looking to brown anything i’m just looking to sear it a little bit and get some flavor uh out in there this is our our broth our base right which is beautiful and I’m just going to slowly add all of this in there starting to look like a chowder to you lobster chowder the best yummy it just reeks of the state of Maine it reminds me of cold late fall and early spring mornings with my dad eating a bowl of this at a restaurant like the Port Hole or Four Street it’s kind of come off menus as of late which is sort of weird because lobster is getting more and more expensive and I love things where you can eat the meat and then I mean you don’t even need to put you could have eaten that lobster meat in one dish and then used all the shells to make this and get a whole other meal out of those shells with this soup this has been simmering for about 15 20 minutes i just tasted it the herbs the vegetables have now rounded out those flavors and it’s time to cream our soup so there’s about 3/4 of a cup give that a little bit of a a stir i usually like to put about cup so let’s put a few more of those in there and we’re going to bring this to a simmer and let it cook for about 10 minutes and let the cream add some of its flavoring mojo to our chowder so here’s where things get really interesting that cream has thickened that soup and it’s time to add that i segregated this bowl of lobster juice and the tamalei and the row but it’s cold that was in the refrigerator so we need to let this come back to temperature the perfect perfect body this is also when because I don’t want to cook it anymore i want to take all of my lobster meat all of that chopped meat we have you know three 3 and 1/2 cups of it and we’re going to put that in there and the reason I do this now is because and you can see because it’s medium rare we have some juices there and it’s just more intense lobster flavor the reason I do that now is that I’d rather bring the lobster slowly up to temperature i want to drop it into boiling soup that’s why I added those juices first because what I’m able to do is add it to 190° liquid instead of 212° liquid and I’m just going to slowly let that come up to temperature now the most important thing to do right now I mean look the body is absolutely perfect all we want to do is taste it little pepper little salt and I don’t taste it for salt until all of that lobster juice is in there because there’s so much salinity in there remember we seasoned our vegetables with salt we’re just going to slowly let that come up to temperature i have this on in between low and medium and I don’t know if you can see but there’s little the steam coming off there i just don’t want to make the lobster meat tough it’s been about 3 or 4 minutes and it’s it’s about to come to a a simmer but I think you can see here how many well just the volume of solids that’s in here you can also see I hope those little red flexcks those little red flexcks in there like on that potato are all those lobster eggs from the lobster row remember that that we put in there there’s a big piece right there if I see a big piece I just break it up remember that parsley and chive mixture we are going to put that on top of the soup as garnish but it’s really nice just to throw a little bit into the soup to season that as well that’s the second time we’ve seasoned with those herbs i mean look at that perfection and I’ll tell you something it tastes pretty grand as well and so all I want to do is put a nice portion of chowder in each bowl you can see just loaded with meat and vegetables pretty darn epic now great chowters to me are always served with a little pad of butter melting on there kind of emphasize the richness some chive and parsley so you have that third seasoning of those herbs some people like oyster crackers with this my dad used to tell me all the time “Buddy when you serve something like this there’s nothing better than buttered toast.” And so there you have it my tribute to the great state of Maine lobster chowder with buttered hala that was left over from Passover the irony is not lost on me this stunning lobster chowder just with a ridiculous amount of lobster in it one of the best things I’ve made in a long time inspired by Maine week a state that I adore lobster chowder get on this [Music]