Red Fish Camp Chowder

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Enjoy and Tight lines,
Captdallas2


This is great cooked outdoors or in.

8-oz diced salt pork
2-pounds fish fillets (normally redfish, but snapper works too.)
1-cup each diced onions, bell pepper and celery.
2-cans crushed tomatoes
1-regular size bottle ketchup
¼ cup flour
about ½ a can of tomato paste I forget this some times and it’s still good
Cayenne pepper- I use about a teaspoon for a hint, some guy like a lot more!


In a cast iron Dutch oven, or a just a big pot if you’re indoors, render the salt pork over medium-high heat. When the pork is crispy brown, there should be about a ¼ cup of fat in the pot. Add the same amount of flour and make a rue. You do this by stirring the flour and oil (pork fat in this case), making a paste that you cook until the flour toasts to the color you like. Adding a little flour or oil may be required to get the paste right. I like a dark blonde rue not quite penny colored, for this chowder. Add the diced veggies, one teaspoon each cayenne pepper, salt and black pepper and sauté until onions are translucent. Add both cans of tomatoes and ½ bottle of the ketchup. Simmer covered for 30 minutes stirring occasionally and checking to make sure it’s not going dry. Cooking outside, I normally have to pour in some beer from time to time. So a can of beer should actually be in the recipe. After 30 minutes, you may need the rest of the ketchup and tomato paste. It should be fairly thick for a soup but a bit thin for a stew. If it looks thin add the ketchup and tomato paste, if it looks too thick, more beer. This is the time to taste and adjust your seasoning. Then add the seasoned fish, (salt and pepper) and simmer until the fillets start breaking up while you stir. With your spoon, break the fillets into bite size pieces and you are done! The whole process can take 45 minutes over an hour, so make sure you have plenty of beer on ice.

Serve over a bed of white rice and have some pepper vinegar on the table. Some fresh biscuits with butter makes a great side. We don’t garnish when we cook out doors.

Capt. Dallas

Pepper vinegar: Take a clean 6 ½ ounce coke bottle and stuff it full on whole hot peppers. The Datil peppers are my favorite. Then fill the bottle with white vinegar. Put one of those plastic coke caps on the bottle a let it sit in the fridge a few months. As you use the vinegar, add a little more to the bottle from time to time. Keeps for a century or two.