Oyster & Plantation Soup
Oyster and plantation soup builds a Caribbean-Creole bisque from ripe plantains, onions, coconut milk, and cream spiked with cayenne, basil, and tarragon, then poaches fresh oysters in their own liquor. A briny-sweet seafood soup with island roots.
YIELD
4 servingsPREP
15 minCOOK
25 minREADY
40 minOyster and plantation soup is the cross-cultural seafood bisque that bridges Caribbean and Creole traditions. Ripe sweet plantains sauté with onions in butter, then deglazed with chicken stock and bound into a creamy soup base with coconut milk and heavy cream.
The seasoning mix is the secret: garlic powder, white pepper, dried basil, cayenne, onion powder, tarragon, ancho chili, and thyme blend into a Cajun-meets-island spice profile that gives this otherwise mild-sounding soup serious dimension.
Fresh shucked oysters and their precious liquor get added at the very end and only need 3 minutes to heat through. Overcooked oysters go rubbery and tough, which would be a tragedy in a soup this rich.
Chef Tips
- Use ripe plantains with black-spotted yellow skins. Underripe green plantains stay starchy and fibrous, while overripe ones turn to mush in the sauté.
- Save every drop of oyster liquor. That brackish liquid in the shucked shells carries the briny essence of the ocean, strain through cheesecloth if you see any grit.
- Dissolve the flour in cold stock before adding. Dry flour clumps into pasty lumps when it hits hot liquid.
- Use full-fat unsweetened coconut milk from a can, not the carton variety. Lite coconut milk doesn’t deliver the body this soup demands.
Variations
Ingredients
Directions
Combine the seasoning mix ingredients in small bowl.
Dissolve the flour in 2 tablespoons of the stock.
Melt butter in a heavy 5 quart pot over high heat.
When it sizzles, add the onions and plantations and cook, stirring constantly, until the onions begin to brown and the plantains are tender, about 8 minutes.
Add the remaining stock and deglaze the pot (that’s just a fancy professional chef’s term for scraping and using the liquid to loosen the brown bits.)
Add the seasoning mix, flour-stock mixture, and coconut milk.
Stir well, then stir in the heavy cream.
Bring just to a boil, stirring constantly, and add the oysters and their liquor.
Return to a gently boil, reduce the heat to medium, and cook, stirring occasionally, just untilt he oysters are heated through about 3 minutes. Remove fromt he heat and serve.
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