Classic Salmon Chowder Recipe

What is chowder?

We’re so glad you asked! A chowder is a thicker, cream-based soup, usually involving an array of vegetables that do well when cooked and softened. Corn, potatoes, onion, celery and carrots are the most common vegetables to add to a chowder. Some people enjoy a simple corn chowder or potato chowder, while others will also add in seafood items like clams and salmon in order to upgrade the protein content and flavor of the soup.

Here at Wild For Salmon, we prefer to use equal amounts of cooked wild Alaskan sockeye salmon and our smoked sockeye salmon (also from wild Alaska!) for the perfect creamy and salty smoked salmon chowder recipe. While you can get both of these items shipped directly to your door as early as next week, you can also use a single sockeye salmon fillet cooked regularly in order to keep your grocery list more concise and your chowder salmon-simple.

Pro Tip: Don’t want to deal with cooking salmon before making salmon chowder? Use our cooked and canned sockeye salmon instead to cut out any salmon prep work!

What kind of salmon is best for chowder?

With five different species of salmon to choose from, it can be confusing to know which type of salmon is best for your cooking. Between rich, boldly colored salmon like King and Sockeye, the more delicately textured salmon like Pink, and those that fall between in color and firmness like Sockeye, Coho and Keta, deciding the best option for each meal can feel like an impossible task.

Luckily, here at Wild For Salmon, we like to keep it simple with this rule of thumb: if we want a rich (but not fishy!) salmon flavor, we use sockeye salmon.

Mixing this quality with its firm texture, sockeye is great at retaining just the right amount of good flavor and buttery feel once cooked. Because you will be heating salmon in an already flavor-rich cream base for chowder, it’s important to utilize a salmon that won’t blend into the background and get lost in the rest of the ingredients. Because of this, Sockeye is our go-to for many of the recipes we make here at Wild For Salmon!

And if you’re curious which type of salmon has the most omega-3s, wild Alaskan sockeye salmon is your answer! Rich with these fatty acids that promote heart, brain and immune health, wild sockeye salmon provides the highest amount of Omega-3 fatty acids of any fish — 2.7 grams per 100 gram portion.

How to Make Salmon Chowder - the Wild For Salmon Way!

Here at Wild For Salmon headquarters, our in-house Chef Nicole makes what has been complimented as “some of the best salmon in Northeastern Pennsylvania”.

With an array of wild-caught seafood products available for endless cooking creations at our store in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, Chef Nicole creates a delicious new seafood soup every week through the fall and winter seasons. Our Salmon Chowder, however, is always the number one requested soup for locals to pop in and purchase a cup of on their lunch break.

Unlike other recipes for salmon chowder out there, our recipe specifically uses the wild-caught salmon that has inspired and nourished us for over twenty years. With a completely natural life cycle and ocean diet, our wild Alaskan salmon products have no additives or chemicals that farmed salmon often consume through their feed. The difference in taste alone between wild-caught and farmed salmon is enough to make you never shop grocery store salmon again!

To make this wild salmon chowder, Chef Nicole first tackles her prepwork; boiling the potatoes, flaking the salmon (or cooking and then flaking if you choose to use salmon fillets), and dicing the onion and celery.

Next, the celery, onions, oil, butter, flour, chicken broth, milk and seasonings are combined at certain intervals in a stock pot until your chowder base is complete.

Her final step is to then add in the salmon and potatoes into the stock pot until a temperature of 165 degrees has been reached. And that’s all there is to making our classic Wild For Salmon Chowder recipe!

Using this balance of fresh sockeye salmon flavor, chunky vegetable texture and the right cooking process we’ve outlined, you’ll be feeling just like a sea captain enjoying a bowl of chowder at port in no-time!

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