Soup success: Corn chowder

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Corn chowder, by paul goyette.

Kathy, the wife, has eaten some pretty fancy chocolate, but honestly prefers Hershey’s Kisses.

After cookies, soup is my comfort food.

I go for creamy soups with vegetables in them. Andrew makes a kick butt potato soup with ham in it. But sometimes the ham is stringy and ruins the creamy consistency of the soup.

Texture is important to me in food. It’s part of my problem with legumes. I can’t stand the grit.

But that is another post.

I tried to make a vegetable soup the other day. I’d give you the recipe but it stunk. Really, even after Andrew came home and fixed it.

I do that. I’ll cook something resembling a meal. He’ll walk in the door and I’ll tell him, “fix it.”

You know, do that voodoo you do to make it taste good. I should watch and learn, I know. But have you ever asked Andrew for a recipe or for explanation on a cooking technique? If you haven’t, and you do, come prepared. You’ll need patience, a notebook, and a pen with a lot of ink.

He’s a detail guy.

Recently, my daughter Lydia has become interested in cooking. She has this cookbook for teenagers (Teens Cook: What to Cook What You Want to Eat by Megan and Jill Carle with Judi Carle). She has made several recipes from this cookbook that we have all enjoyed. We keep telling her to write up the turkey-bacon puff pasty pockets.

I tried their corn chowder recipe. After all, I had a desperate need to use up that can of creamed corn that I’ve had in the pantry for, geez, maybe three years?

I changed up the recipe. I have learned a few things whether I want to or not, from Andrew over the years.

Toss in a hunk of butter (a couple tablespoons or more) into the bottom of a soup pot. Add some chopped or minced onions – maybe about a cup. Then dice up a carrot and add that. Peel a large potato and cut that up into bite sized pieces. Add that to the carrots and onions. Toss in some salt and some pepper and stir it around a bit over medium heat. Watch the bottom of the pot. If it gets too dry then you might want to toss in more butter.

After a few minutes I added the last bit (it was probably a cup) of chicken stock from a carton in the fridge. You could probably use vegetable stock (but after that last soup I am staying away from veggie stock for a while). Add the can of creamed corn. You could use 1 to 1 ½ cups of frozen corn, too. But like I said, I had a can to get rid of.

Let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Then add a couple of cups of milk. Let it warm up. You aren’t supposed to let milk boil but in typical Kathy tradition, I wandered off to do something else, and completely forgot about the soup I had set on medium heat until Lydia began to scream about the pot boiling over.

It didn’t hurt the taste one bit.

Add more salt and pepper if it needs it and voila: cream of corn, potato and carrot soup. Surprisingly, it tasted quite good.

Corn chowder
2-4 tablespoons butter
1 cup chopped or minced onions
1 carrot chopped in bite sized pieces
1 large potato, peeled and chopped into bite sized pieces
1 can creamed corn (or 1 – 1 ½ cups of frozen corn)
1 cup chicken broth
2 – 2 ½ cups milk
salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, saute the onions, carrots, potatoes in the butter for three to five minutes. Add the corn and the chicken stock. Let it simmer for ten minutes, until the carrots and potatoes are tender. Add the milk, salt and pepper. Let it come to temperature (or in my case, let it boil over - no, actually I don’t recommend that). Garnish with shredded cheese if you like and serve.

I garnished my bowl with some shredded Monterey Jack. I think a sharp cheddar would work better. And maybe some crusty croutons.

Mmmm. I think I’ll make it again.

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