Thickening fish chowder?

[Whoaru99]

Made a batch of fish chowder tonight but it didn't thicken up as I expected it would. I made it according to a recipe and that said the starch from the potatoes would thicken it. Well, it's not exactly water consistency, but it's certainly not thickened much. I followed the recipe very closely for what it's worth...

Now that the potatoes and fish are done, much more cooking probably will result in a kettle of non-descript mush.

Tastes good, but needs more "body". Anything I can do at this point, or am I resigned to lots of crackers?

[DinkADunk]

Take a sauce pan and heat up some butter (half stick) and add flour (1/2 c or so). Cook the flour for a couple of minutes until you have a paste. Now take a ladle of the soup a put it in with the flour mixture (reux) and mix. Pour the mixture into the soup and mix. You won't need to cook your chowder anymore just max sure everything is heated through.

The other way would be to take some of the potatoes out of the chowder (or nuke some new ones in the microwave), place into a pan with some of the chowder stock (filter out the big bits), and then wiz up with the motor boat (or mix in a blender). Pour that back in the chowder and it should be a bit thicker.

Or, add some instant mashed potato flakes to your chowder.

[Whoaru99]

The roux worked very well.

I've done that before for starting other sauces but, for some reason, it didn't dawn on me that it would work after the fact too.

Thanks!!

[BigWadeS]

I use the butter and flour roux, but you can also use Corn Starch and water

[Windy City Walleye Hunter]

I was watching a cooking show and they were cooking mussels and when they were making the sauce for the mussels they used about 10 of the cooked mussels themselves in the liquid and used the stick blender, otherwise called a boat motor, to puree it and it made the sauce thicker. Just thought I would throw that in though the roux sounds like the way to go.

Windy

[IFallsRon]

Corn starch and cold water works well. You also can use some potato flakes. Sometimes I'll pour off excess water and toss in a can of cream of potato or cream of celery.