Name: Pamlico Muddle
Yield: Makes 6 servings
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste; ¼ pound fresh sea scallops, quartered; 1 teaspoon dried thyme, crumbled; 1 bay leaf; 2 cups water; 2 cups bottled clam broth; ½ pound fresh grouper, red snapper, or other nonoily white fish fillets, cut into 1-inch pieces; 3 medium ripe tomatoes, diced; 2 garlic cloves, minced; 1 small red bell pepper, seeded and diced; 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice; 3 medium onions, diced; 4 slices bacon; ¼ pound medium shrimp, shelled and deveined; 2 celery ribs, diced; Tabasco sauce to taste; 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Preparation info

Makes
6
servings

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

The Glory of Southern Cooking

By James Villas

Published 2007

About

It was the earliest English colonists who introduced muddles (“a mess of fish”), mulls, and other robust seafood soups and stews to the barrier islands that separate North Carolina’s Pamlico Sound from the Atlantic Ocean, and today the tradition continues all along the remote Outer Banks. I’ve had muddles so thick with fish and shellfish you could almost eat them with a fork, but the best I’ve tasted were much more like this amazingly light, herby concoction, which tastes so good on a cold