Missy2U, feel free to add bacon, but it’s unnecessary. Unless you add too much, the flavor won’t come through well anyway.
Missy, just buy the damned canned stuff, pour into a pan, then hide the cans in the trash!
Sheeeeeesh!
~VOW
Tomato-based soups freeze well, much better than cream-based. However, I don’t think cioppino and boullabaise can be frozen since they contain shrimp and squid. Maybe just the basic stock, without the seafood.
Salt pork is the way to go.
Truth be told, they’re all good, but different. Bacon or salt pork. Rhode Island, New England, or Manhattan, they all have something to offer. Manhattan is my least favorite of the bunch, though. Bacon overpowers a bit, but New England style with bacon is what I mostly had growing up, so I have a fondness for it.
As everyone said, though, it should freeze fine. And do it with the bacon, since that’s what he wants. Despite my suggestion of salt pork, it’s no bacon, and if someone is expecting bacon (note that that recipe calls for 12 slices of bacon) and gets salt pork instead, they will not be happy. 
The winner and champeen! Either do that or bounce one of the full cans off his noggin.
Yeah, I don’t know about this red RI clam chowder. The best clam chowder, as you have already said, is not very thick at all. You don’t know how many bowls of thick, gloppy psuedo-chowder I’ve had to endure since moving the CA. Everyone here thicks that’s the test of “real” chowder. And I’m not going to go into the green shit people put in it here. Poor, ignorant souls!!
You know, if you don’t have fresh clams and quality clam juice you may as well throw in some bacon or salt pork for more flavor. Before moving here to New England I always added some pork. But around here I found that the best chowders were rich in clam flavor and the pork really wasn’t an enhancement.
It is one of those dishes (or several of those dishes in the major varieties) that there will never be agreement on. Bacon or not, onions are an argument in white chowder, “How dare you thicken it with flour!?!?!”, chopped or whole clams, quahogs or regular clams, there is no end to it. Yet almost every variety is good, except the Manhattan.
The manhattan style should not be called chowder. Why, there outta be a law!
It’s called chow-dah! Not Show-dare!
Yeah, I don’t like the pasty stuff you can almost stand a spoon in. I’ve never added flour or any other thickeners to my clam chowder. The starch from the potatoes is enough–it doesn’t need to be the consistency of paint or paste.
In this world, there is real clam chowder, and then there is tomato soup that happens to have some clams hiding in it. Mind you, I don’t have anything against tomato soup. And I’ve had some “Manhattan clam chowder” that was actually pretty good tomato soup. But why bother putting clams in if you’re not actually going to make real clam chowder?