Chowdah, Corn Chowdah

Let’s skip the awkward, “it’s been a while” talk.

Hi!

The hubby has been bugging me about making corn chowder for about a month now. Like, twice a day, every day, type of bugging. Here’s the thing…I don’t like chowder. I generally don’t make things that I don’t like/eat.

I don’t know what came over me, but I decided to google “easy corn chowder” and a ton of recipes appeared. I was pleasantly surprised to find that you could probably make chowder with items you already have in your pantry and fridge. After looking at about 10 recipes, I decided to create my own, despite not having a clue what I was doing. I liked the freshness of some recipes that included bell peppers and fresh corn, while I liked the ease of throwing in a can of cream of mushroom to create a thicker consistency.

Here went nothing.

Ingredients

Bacon – 6 slices

Celery – 2 stalks

Corn – 2 fresh, 1 15 oz can, drained

Bell Pepper – Half of a medium size

Onion – Half of a medium size

Potatoes – 4 medium size red

Cream of mushroom soup – 1 can

Chicken broth – 1 package, approx. 14 oz

Butter – 1 tbsp.

Salt and Pepper to taste

Water

Leftover Chicken (Optional)

Corn Starch (Optional)

I began by cutting 6 strips of bacon into small pieces. I threw them into my pot over medium heat, and as they cooked, I chopped up the onion, celery, and bell pepper into a small/medium dice. Remember to stir your bacon occasionally; you don’t want it to burn. I wanted the veggies small enough to cook quickly, but big enough so you could taste and see them in the chowder. Once the bacon was cooked, I removed them with a slotted spoon and placed the bits on a paper towel to drain excess oil.

I then added butter to the bacon fat, followed by the cut onion, celery and bell pepper. You’ll want to stir this occasionally to allow the veggies to cook and keep the stove on medium heat. Season with salt and pepper. While this is cooking, cut your potatoes. I chose a larger dice. I don’t know why. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Once your onions are translucent and the veggies appear soft, it’s time to add your chicken broth and water. [Note here: I added 4 cups of water, and my chowder remained a bit on the brothy side. In hindsight, I should have only added 2-3 cups to get a more thick, recognizable, chowder consistency] Add your potatoes, add some salt and pepper, and turn the heat to high. I wanted a low boil, to cook the potatoes half way quickly, since they’d sit in the pot for a while.

While the potatoes are cooking, cut your fresh corn. Reality is, you don’t need fresh corn, canned

corn on its own would have been fine. I thought some fresh corn would make the chowder….fresh.

Anyway, be careful when cutting corn off the cob. It will fly EVERYWHERE. Try one of those hacks with inverted bowls or a bundt pan. Otherwise, you’ll have corn all over the counter, floor, and yourself. After the potatoes have been low boiling for about 5 minutes, reduce the heat to medium/low, and add the fresh corn, canned corn, cream of mushroom soup, and half of your cooked bacon. Mix well. Taste. Add more salt and pepper if necessary. I left this on the stove on low heat for about 30 minutes. The potatoes were soft, some of the smaller pieces disintegrated, that’s ok.

Use leftover bacon to garnish the top of the soup.

Optional

 I found the consistency to be too brothy, so I made a corn starch slurry (equal parts corn starch and cold water in a bowl, stirred) and added it in and allowed it thicken up with the heat off for 10 minutes.

I had leftover chicken thighs from the previous night’s dinner, so I chopped up the meat and added it to the chowder when I added the corn and cream of mushroom soup.

End Result

I thought the flavor was good, and my husband loved it. Chowder still isn’t for me though.

This was easy enough to make, and fairly inexpensive. I estimate my total price (including chicken) to be $13, for roughly 8 huge servings. I would definitely make this again, for a chowder loving crowd.

Try it and let me know if you like it!

Albondiga Soup

So, I know it's summer.

It's hot.

And for most people, hot soup is the last thing they want on a hot day.

 

I'm not most people. I love soup. I could eat it every day, all day. My favorite soup, since I was a little girl, has been albondiga soup. It's a Mexican meatball soup filled with rice and veggies (the way I make it) and it is hearty and delicious and perfect any day of the year.

 

When I did my Sunday meal prep, I tried to make things I knew I could eat for a few days and not tire of. For me and the kid, this soup is it. It's relatively cheap to make too, the most costly ingredient being the protein.

Let's begin!

 

Start this recipe by putting a large pot of water to boil. To the water, add 8 ounces of tomato sauce (1 small can), 1 tomato bouillon cube, salt, pepper, dried oregano, cilantro (all to taste).

 

Ingredients for the meatball

Ground beef

Cilantro

Salt

Pepper

Cumin

Dried Oregano

Garlic Powder

Chili Powder

Hot Sauce

Egg

Pinch of uncooked rice

 

Note: I didn't include measurements, because it's really to taste. Want to cut salt? Leave it out. Don't like heat? Omit the hot sauce and chili powder. The taste of the meatballs can be accommodated to everyone's taste buds.

 

Note about protein: You can easily swap out ground beef for ground chicken or ground turkey. My favorite is ground chicken. It has incredible flavor, but I didn't have any, so I used ground beef.

 

Note about ground beef: try to go lean or you'll have a really oily, greasy soup. I like fat, but I found myself skimming the fat quite a bit in this 80/20 beef. I think 90/10 is pretty ideal. Also, if you're making this ahead, after the soup cools, put the entire pot in the fridge overnight and in the morning, the fat will have solidified and will be easy to remove. If you're eating right away, skim, skim, skim.

Now, add all ingredients to a large bowl and mix with your hands. Once mixed, let sit until your pot is ready to go. Once your water (broth?) in the pot, comes to a boil, lower the flame a bit, you want a gentle boil to cook the soup.

 

Roll your meatball and add to the pot, one at a time. I prefer the size of a golf ball or slightly smaller.

 

Let cook for about 10 minutes, and prep your veggies.

 

Veggies.

You can add any veggie that boils well. You can certainly add more veggies than  I do. Since I like the meatball to be the star of the soup, I only add three veggies: carrots, potatoes, and squash. You'll want to peel or wash your veggies before chopping. I peel the carrots, but leave the potato skin. You also want to add veggies into the soup based on their cook time.

 

Since carrots are denser, I add them first. I peel, and dice, season with salt and pepper. Add to pot. After about 5-7 minutes, I chop up the potatoes, slightly larger than I did the carrots, season with salt and pepper, and add them to the pot. After 5-7 minutes, I dice the squash. I also take out the middle of the squash, it tends to overcook and leave mushy bits throughout the soup. Season with salt and pepper, add to pot.

 

It's very important to season everything on it's own, no bland food here!

 

After 5 minutes, check to make sure all veggies are tender by sticking a fork in them.

 

It's important to know approximately how long it takes your veggies to cook. You don't want hard or overly cooked vegetables.

So after about 30-35 minutes (after your pot has come to a boil), your soup is ready. Not too bad, right?

 

Time to assemble.

 

Pick your bowl. Add some cooked rice. (I made rice in bulk on Sunday too, stay tuned for that blog post!) Ladle on your soup.

 

Add, to taste, lemon and/or hot sauce. I chose both.

 

Note about hot sauce: I like Cholula. It's not very hot, at all, but very flavorful. If you want spicy, choose a Tabasco or Tapatio, or even better, something homemade!

 

I made this recipe in bulk, enough for one nights dinner for me and the kids, and lunches throughout the week for me and the kid.



 

You might not think this is kid friendly fare, but I have found that kids LOVE meatballs. It's strange really, I haven't met a kid who doesn't. A soup like this is a great way to introduce veggies to kids who maybe are opposed to them. You can chop up the veggies and meatballs to small dices, so they can't differentiate what the veggies actually are. Dice the veggies small AFTER cooking, before serving, otherwise, if you make them that small to start with, they'll just turn to mush. My kid loves carrots and will eat them in any state of cooking. The other veggies, not so much. So, I leave the carrots regular size, and dice up the other veggies small, like I suggested earlier. He eats up the whole thing, and sometimes even asks for seconds!

Last note, but more of a tip. Notice my first picture, is the bowl of soup on top of a plate? My soup came out of the fridge today and needed to be heated up in a microwave. I like my soup HOT, temperature wise. Just microwaving the bowl of soup, would leave the bowl way too hot to handle. By heating up the bowl on top of a plate, the bowl and it's contents get hot, but the plate gets only slightly warm, making it easy to remove from the microwave and not burn your fingers.

 

Why? I have no idea, but it works.

 

Hope you enjoyed today's recipe and if you don't make it, hope you took away some tips or tricks.

 

Until next time!

Soup Weather

It's been raining all day. 

It's dark, gloomy, and on the cool side.

It's a perfect day for some soup.

The hubby wanted me to make chicken tortilla soup, but I didn't have a 28 oz. can of crushed tomatoes, cream, or avocados.  To make it, I would have had to change out of pajamas and face the rain.  I opted to talk him into plain chicken soup instead.

To start, I boiled 4 chicken breasts (all I had but bone in chicken would be wonderful here), in a large pot, seasoned with salt and garlic powder for 30 minutes.

I'm a big fan of clean broth so once the chicken was done, I transferred the breasts into a bowl for shredding (covered with broth so the chicken wouldn't harden) and I then strained the remaining broth into a smaller pot.

I brought the broth back up to a boil and then I added: potatoes (peeled and diced), carrots (peeled and diced), celery (diced), a chunk of onion (for flavor and was removed after the soup was done) and a cube of cilantro.  I made sure to season (salt and pepper) the potatoes and carrots before adding them to the broth.  I let everything come up to a boil for about 10 minutes.

I was originally going to shred the chicken, but decided that big, diced, chunks of chicken would be better and added it to the soup.  I let it continue to cook about 15 minutes until the vegetables were fork tender.

While the soup cooked, the hubby was nice enough to make a cup of red rice for me.  Recipe to follow in another post.

We topped it off with some Cholula for a kick.

It was a great choice for a not so great day.