I've always used the following guidelines:

If the broth is thin, it's soup.

If the broth is thick and/or milk/cream based, it's chowder.

The one exception I can think of is Manhattan clam chowder which has a thin broth.

I made potato bisque soup yesterday for lunches. Yummy. Had a left over zucchini from the zucchini birthday cake I baked for my sister, so I sliced it up for the soup too, and it was a nice addition.

I think chowders, besides being on the thicker side, typically have diced potatoes and milk or cream. It's a small family - corn or vegetable chowders, seafood chowder, clam chowder.

There are many kinds of thick soup, like - cream of ....... - and these aren't usually called chowder.

Sounds like the haystack supper the local fire dept. offers as their fund raiser.

I'd call it stew. It sounds delish.

Lucille, did you forget the liquid/stock? It sounds thick like stew to me, but then.. I am unfamiliar with that gravy. Is it canned or bottled?

It is powdered, so you add liquid to prepare it, so when I said prepared gravy, I meant with it already fixed up and liquid.

Turkey in Cream Sauce or Creamed Turkey

I can't see this as a soup or even a stew.

"Turkey Delish Dish", so no nomenclature purists will be offended.

:^)

Rusty

Where would I find Pioneer Country Gravy?

I live in the Twin City area of Minnesota.

Seniorgal,

I got mine on Amazon

Whatever else you say about it, Amazon is probably responsible for more voluntary food culture sharing that probably any other entity on earth. I've tried many new foods and spices because I was shopping for something on Amazon and decided to give something else new I saw there a try.

OP did not say which flavor of gravy mix was used and the company makes several. If it is the white kind although I would never use powdered milk to add to it I like Southeastern Mills Pepper Gravy. I think in this area it used to be sold as Old Southern Mills but a search for that name shows nothing.

Seniorgal, you can find it at Walmart. Probably most any other grocery store in the section where they have packets like beef stew seasoning or chili mixes. I've made the onion soup recipe on the back of the package, it's good. It's not like the onion soup I've had at Panera, which I don't care for.

Edit to say I'm in NC.

OP did not say which flavor of gravy mix was used and the company makes several.

Although Pioneer makes a number of gravy mixes, as far as I know it only makes one Country Gravy mix (which to me is delicious). I also use it to make broccoli cheese soup. The gravy packets are nice and big and two packets made and diluted to the thickness I use ends up making about 8 cups. With 2 cups turkey meat, 2 cups corn, and about 2 cups potato, it was a good size potful of soup/chowder/stew.

As far as tweaking the recipe, by all means make it yours. I add the whole milk powder to make it richer. Yesterday I added a half teaspoon of red pepper flakes to the entire pot which added a small but nice bite.

Soup you can slurp, stew and chowder are thicker and need to be chewed, in my house. :)

Moni

The way chowder was made when I was a boy was to start with cooked meat and toss in all manner of vegetables, add water and seasoning to suit and heat until the veggies were done. Sometimes this was done in a large iron kettle over an open fire outside at a social gathering.

We also had turkey soup the last couple of days--from frozen Thanksgiving turkey, and stock from the carcass. To me, clear broth yields soup, less broth with a thickener makes stew, added cream or milk makes a chowder.

If part of the other cooked ingredients in the chowder are mashed or pureed, then it's cream of __________. When I was a child, I thought my mother made the best cream of potato soup, with mashed potatoes. All that was needed was a handful of crackers and a sprinkle of shredded sharp cheddar. May not be entirely accurate cooking terminology--I don't recall anything we ate being called chowder.

I make what I call seafood chowder, which is comprised of fish and shrimp, potatoes, onions, carrots, corn, and peas simmered in a rich broth into which cream is added towards the end. I use a seafood seasoning from Penzeys (their Chesapeake mix....better by far than Old Bay) as the only spice.

I'm not sure why I declare it a chowder, probably the addition of the cream to the seafood.

I love the tradition of turkey soup from the frozen carcass! Always look forward to it, but have never added a gravy mix to the flavorful broth.

In the south it's only "chowder" if it is clam chowder otherwise it's soup. It's not a word we typically use.