Keto Clam Chowder

This Keto Clam Chowder is low carb, super easy to make, rich, full of flavour and has the right textures... including "potato"!

The weather started turning lately.

With all of the crisp air and pretty leaf colours came a WILD craving for clam chowder.

With all of the flour and potatoes, this was obviously a craving that wasn’t going to be satiated without a fair amount of tweaking.

The flour would be easy enough to cut, just thickening the chowder in other ways.

While I could *Theoretically* just leave the potatoes out... NO, I could not.

A chowder needs potatoes, IMHO.

So, it became a matter of replacing them with something passable.

Low Carb “Potatoes”

I started by looking at the “Usual” suspects, when it came to substituting out potatoes in low carbing.

Cauliflower

First option was cauliflower, which I use for my Low Carb Cauliflower Mash.

I decided that this wasn’t a great option to start with - though I may play with it in the future.

The florets ... wouldn’t be a sub for potatoes in chowder. It would just be chunks of cauliflower.

I suppose the stems could maybe sub if they were cut up right, but that sounded like a hassle.

Celery Root

The second option I considered was celery root.

I generally use celery root as a sub for rice, not potatoes... but the fact that it could be cut into cubes made it an attractive option for this chowder.

That said, I ended up deciding that while the celery taste would fit in the chowder - I DO use celery in it, after all - that the taste would make it less than ideal as a POTATO sub.

Radishes

Ok it sounds weird, but hear me out!

In my pre-low-carb days, my Roasted Radish Salad was a favourite at this time of year.

Radishes, carrots, and squash were chopped up, roasted, and drizzled with a maple dijon vinaigrette. Amazing, but yeah... not really low carb.

Anyway, the thing about that dish is that the roasted radishes didn’t taste like radish at all - roasting them rendered them tender and sweet - all of the bite was gone.

And, you know... they’re white with a red rind - they’d even look something like potatoes, in a chowder.

SOLD.

The big thing was wondering if sauteeing them would also render them sweet and neutral.

I couldn’t be arsed to roast them for what SHOULD be more or less a one-pot soup.

As it turned out, the answer was yes - sauteeing them killed the radish bite, leaving them tender and somewhat sweet - a perfectly acceptable potato substitute for this use!

We use chicken bacon, but you can use normal bacon if you like.

Keto Clam Chowder Ingredients

With the flour skipped and the potato swapped out for radishes, most of the remaining ingredients are pretty usual for clam chowder:

Bacon
Butter
Celery
Onion
Garlic
Seafood or chicken broth
Clam juice
Summer savoury
Bay leaf
Mascarpone cheese
Clams

A few notes:

- We use chicken bacon, as pork... uh, doesn’t go over so well with either of our bodies anymore. You can totally use normal bacon if you’d like!

- We usually use homemade seafood stock, but chicken broth works fine.

- Summer savoury is an East coast Canadian thing when it comes to chowder. I love it, but I also know it can be hard to find GOOD summer savoury when not in Canada. Feel free to use a little - like a pinch - of thyme, instead.

- Mascarpone cheese was what I decided to thicken the chowder with. It was between that and heavy cream, and I decided this would add the thickness and some fat, but be easier to digest.

How to Make Low Carb Clam Chowder

Full recipe follows, here’s the pictorial overview:

Cook the bacon until starting to get crispy. Remove from heat, chop, and set aside.

Wash and chop radishes into bite-sized pieces.

In a medium-large pot, cook radishes in butter until they start to tenderize a bit.

Add celery and onion, cook until onion is soft and translucent.

Add garlic, stir and cook for one more minute.

Add broth, clam juice, savoury, and bay leaf, bring to a simmer.

Simmer for 10 minutes.

Add Mascarpone, stir until melted through and well combined.

Add clams, stir well to combine, and bring just to a simmer.

In a small bowl, whisk xanthan gum together with 2 tablespoon cold water, until smooth. Add a bit of broth from the pot, whisking until smooth.

Add this slurry to the pot, whisk well to combine, and allow to simmer for 3 minutes.

Season with salt and pepper to taste, serve hot.

Recipe Notes

The recipe software doesn't like the idea of canned clams, and gave weird info for it ("4 calories").

So the nutritional info doesn't include the clams for some reason.

This is higher in protein than it says, as a result!

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5 from 1 vote

Keto Clam Chowder

This Keto Clam Chowder is low carb, super easy to make, rich, full of flavour and has the right textures... including "potato"!

Prep Time5 minutes mins

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Total Time35 minutes mins

Course: Main Course, Soup

Cuisine: American

Diet: Diabetic, Gluten Free

Servings: 4 people

Calories: 433kcal

Ingredients

• 4 slices Chicken bacon Can use pork bacon if desired.
• 1 lb Radishes
• 2 tablespoon Butter
• 2 Celery ribs
• 1 Small onion
• 2 Garlic cloves
• 1 ½ cups Seafood or chicken broth
• 8 oz Clam juice
• ½ teaspoon Summer savoury
• 1 Bay leaf
• 1 cup Mascarpone cheese
• 2 6.5 oz cans of clams drained
• Salt and pepper

Instructions

• Cook the bacon until starting to get crispy. Remove from heat, chop, and set aside.
• Wash and chop radishes into bite sized pieces.
• In a medium large pot, cook radishes in butter until they start to tenderize a bit.
• Add celery and onion, cook until onion is soft and translucent.
• Add garlic, stir and cook for one more minute.
• Add broth, clam juice, savoury, and bay leaf, bring to a simmer.
• Simmer for 10 minutes.
• Add Mascarpone, stir until melted through.
• Add clams, stir well to combine, and bring just to a simmer.
• Allow to simmer for 3 minutes.
• Season with salt and pepper to taste, serve hot.

Notes

The recipe software doesn't like the idea of canned clams, and gave weird info for it ("4 calories").

So the nutritional info doesn't include the clams for some reason. This is higher in protein than it says, as a result!

Nutrition

Calories: 433kcal | Carbohydrates: 16g | Protein: 12g | Fat: 36g | Saturated Fat: 21g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 3g | Trans Fat: 1g | Cholesterol: 85mg | Sodium: 686mg | Potassium: 506mg | Fiber: 3g | Sugar: 5g | Vitamin A: 1101IU | Vitamin C: 23mg | Calcium: 142mg | Iron: 1mg

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