Talk

the chowder will be fine, it's anything else in the freezer that you may have defrosted and refrozen that you need to be careful of....
I'd have put this in recipes/food rather than development and behaviour though!
..and yes, it is usual to cook, cover, cool and then freeze.

But yes, it's normal to cool the food before freezing not because of the food (although rapidly freezing from hot can cause different ice crystals to form, but that's just texture) but because of raising the temperature of the freezer.

Small amount, large very cold freezer, little chance to be a problem. Large amount in a small warm freezer (e.g. the little bit on top of a fridge) quite likely to have thawed other stuff.

The only things that will happen from doing this is a potential change in texture (dependent on what you are freezing) & it can cause the things by it to heat up a bit.

There was a thing on QI that said hot water freezes faster than cold - something to do with the speed of molecules that I didn't understand - so it could be a benefit.