Seafood Soup Subcategories

Like other soup categories, seafood soups come with their own subcategories. Depending on the geographic, consumers tend to have preferences and each region specificities.

In North America chowders soups are thickened with roux and heavy cream; but often too thick, in my opinion. In Northern France, we use less roux but “crème fraîche” which is a richer cream. In Southern France, the fish soup for “Bouillabaisse” is pushed through a vegetable mill, to finish like a thin puree soup. The French will also use the crustacean shells and heads to make bisque soup, a highly concentrated soup with a hint of cream – of course! The Italian “Zuppa di Pesce” or fish soup will be more of a broth with plenty of seafood.

Of course, I can go on and on, as many countries have wonderful seafood soups but the technique will be based on the subcategories below.

 In today’s cuisine, seafood soups are categorized into 3 subcategories:

Chowder Soups	Thickened broth soup using the “singer” method at the start of the cooking process.
Bisque	Broth crustaceans soup with intense flavor thickened with “beurre manié” or other ingredients at the end of the cooking process.
Fish & Shellfish Soups	Unthickened liquid broth soup with seafood morsels or puree fish soup thickened with fish flesh.

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