Cockle Chowder

[Knackers 696]

Just cooking myself 4 litres of cockle chowder. I thouht I'd share an easy recipe that you can adapt for any seafood.I just saw the desanding cockle thread and thought I should add the way I do it before discussing the recipe. It does involve equipment and some prep but I have kept cockles alive for at least a week using this.I collect my cockles and put them into a 20 litre water jerry. I generally get another 40 litres of salt water in other jerries. Put cockles into a tub or 50-60 litre esky. Then I assemble a spare cheap bilge pump connected to a battery with a charger attached. Garden hose or pipe from the pump to a gun where you can muck around with the setting on the gun to get a good spread for oxygenation and cooling of the water. I just dismantled my setup but it is a pump in the water, hose going up to the gun cabled tied to somewhere convienent shooting back into the cockle container.The reason I do this is for 2 reasons. Cockles die (for me) from overheating and poor oxygenation. They never get the opportunity to die from disease or starvation :whistle: I've left them in a bucket with water from the site on a hot day in the shade and some of them are dead even before 24hrs. I've put a bait aerator in them and they still die.

[Knackers 696]

So what I have found that works is to have a setup that squirts the water back in from a height that allows for evaporation for cooling and a good size tub or esky that doesn't create a deep sand layer at the bottom. I have eaten cockles five days in a row using this. I do love cockles. Here are my Shark Bay cocklesAnd the result

[Knackers 696]

The chowder recipe. For my 4 litre batch.2 onions fine chopped. About 300 grams of bacon chopped the same. Cook until the onion goes clear.

[Knackers 696]

Add milk and stock and cream. I use somewhere between 1 - 2 litres of milk and the corresponding amount of chicken stock. I use chicken stock as I find that seafood stock reminds me of an old unhyghenic fish shop. I've tried to make my own but to me seafood is either fresh or it is fertiliser.I put the stock in as a powder and add the water later, that is why the tide is out.

[Knackers 696]

Once I put all that in I let it reduce a bit to concentrate the flavours. Maybe for a half hour. Tasting is good. Do not worrry so much about salt as when the live cockles open they will add their own. STOP. I forget to say I add finely chopped spuds, 4 in this case, into the bacon and onion mix and stir for about five minutes. This is important as the spuds and starch are the thickening agent for the chowder.Then these still live cockles that I collected on Monday night go into the broth

[Knackers 696]

So I just dumped those in. Here are some photos of Coffin Bay cocklesSoy, bacon, garlic, ginger fried cocklesMy wife cooking a cockle pastaAnd the pasta

[Ale 301]

Frofn, num num :woohoo:

[Knackers 696]

I've just put the cockles in to the broth and pulled the pot off heat after 10 minutes on a gentle boil. Every cockle has opened. Very tasty. But if you cook them too long they get chewy. I've either got to get them out of the shells for polite company or leave them in their shells for neanderthals who like to stick their hands into a soup bowl for what is theirs. I'll be splitting this up and freezing it into meals.I've cooked many of these chowders. If you've been around enough you could say you are just poaching seafood in milk. But experiment away. I've put in blue cheese instead of milk to great effect. Regardless, I've used this basic recipe with mussells, scallops and fish, especially smoked fish. Mix and match, add a can of tomato soup or use leeks for example. My other passion is seafood paellas. This is not a good photo, but is from Port Julia. Blue Crab, Scallop and shark. I'll try to do a recipe on these as well.

[netman21 0]

what about using a large aquarium pump as an aerator would that work

[Knackers 696]

what about using a large aquarium pump as an aerator would that work

It might just be me but I find that they start to die after 2 days with an aerator. Coffin Bay cockles or mud cockles might be more tolerant but Goolwa Cockles come from highly oxygenated water. I've lost a few batches that I wanted to eat that became bait instead. I'm trying to keep all of them alive for days rather than just de-sand them. The spray keeps the water cool as well. A lot of evaporation occurs which is why I continually top them up with fresh salt water.