Recipe - Low Fat Clam Chowder
Makes about 10 cups.
One serving as a meal is 2 cups, one serving as an appetizer or side dish is 1 cup.
- 2 small or 1 large cooking onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 3 stalks celery, diced
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 can clam juice (13.5 oz)
- 4 cans chopped clams (6.5 oz), juice reserved
- 4-6 organic carrots sliced thin
- 4 potatoes cut into 1/2" cubes
- 1 pint fat free Half & Half
- 1 tablespoon black ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon Konjac Flour (No Calorie Thickener)
Saute onions, garlic and celery in the butter just until onions are soft and translucent. Add the clam juice from the can as well as the juice from the canned clams. Add the carrots and potatoes and cook for about 10-15 minutes on medium heat just until potatoes and carrots are fork tender. Stir in half and half and black pepper to taste. To thicken the chowder, whisk in one teaspoon of Konjac Flour. Simmer 5 minutes and serve.
Notes:
If using fresh steamed clams, increase the clam juice to two cans and cut clams into bite sized pieces.
If you have never heard of Konjac Flour, I am not surprised. I discovered it recently when I found out about Miracle Noodles from another website. It's a flour derived from a plant and has been used in Japan for many years. It's basically used as a thickener and contains no sugar, starch, calories, fat, gluten or wheat, just pure soluble fiber. 1 teaspoon of this powder acts like 10 teaspoons of cornstarch, so you don't need much.
Making this chowder with Konjac Flour makes a 2 cup serving about 5 points on the Weight Watchers scale. That is incredible to me. If you don't have this flour, you will need to thicken by making a rue of equal parts melted butter and flour and mixing it into the chowder, therefor dramatically increasing the fat and calories in this dish. You can also thicken it with potato flakes, but I really don't care for the texture that way.
I've also chosen organic carrots because they seem to offer a much sweeter flavor then traditionally grown carrots. I know many chowder recipes call for a little sugar to be added to the dish and this is not necessary with organic carrots.
A 3x5 card version of this recipe can be found here.