How to Keep Warm in the Winter: Corn and Potato Chowder

 

You may have noticed that we've been cooking up a lot of Italian food lately on this blog, and there's good reason for that: we love it, and it's delicious. That being said, we're all about cooking great food at home, no matter what the cuisine. Our previous meal of spaghetti carbonara called for bacon. As some of you may know, it's difficult to buy bacon in quantities that are socially acceptable to eat in one serving. As a result, we had quite a bit left over and came across this recipe for a wonderful corn and potato chowder that would make use of our excess bacon whilst warming our hearts and hearth on a cold winter night.

That's right. It's cold, and I want some soup. Preferably soup with bacon. 

We love soup, and we especially love soup now that we have our fancy immersion blender. It really is a marvelous device - you can blend anything into a nice, smooth puree, in seconds! It's shocking that we were able to get by for so long without one. We either avoided recipes that required pureeing, or schlepped the boiling mixture between the pot and the blender and then treated our scalding hands after the top of the blender would eventually pop off. Not any more. Now when a recipe calls for pureeing, we say "bring it on."


Making the Dish

Serves 4


1 tablespoon butter
1/4 pound bacon, diced
1 cup chopped onion
1 green pepper, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken stock
4 all purpose potatoes, diced
1 carrot shredded
2 cups frozen corn kernels
1 cup half and half
1/2 teaspoon thyme
Salt, pepper, cayenne to taste
2 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley

There are a lot of ingredients that go into this dish and they've all gotta be diced up so we suggest doing that first, and if you have a partner, share the load. Dice up your potato, carrot, bacon, onion, green pepper, italian parsley and garlic, and set them to the side so they're ready to go.

Next is our favorite part - cook up your bacon. Throw it in a big pot with melted butter and let it cook until it renders its fat and gets nice and crispy.

Once it's done, take out the bacon and let it rest on a paper towel. Try not to eat it all while it's resting.

This is going to be hard to resist. 

Then, throw your diced veggies, except for the potatoes into the bacon fat and cook them down.

After your veggies are cooked, add in your flour and stir around until they're all coated. Cook for a bit, and then add in your chicken stock and potatoes. Bring this to a bubble and then reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the potatoes have cooked.

Once the potatoes are tender, add in your frozen corn kernels and stir together.

Then, add in your half and half to get a nice creamy texture. Let simmer for a few minutes after this is complete. After a few minutes, get to work with your immersion blender. Puree the soup briefly so that it still has a few chunks throughout but the majority of the potatoes are blended. Aim to blend about 2/3 of the soup.

Finally, add your bacon back into the mix (you do this after the blending so you can savor those nice big bacon chunks). This is the best part, assuming you haven't been eating it all while it waited on the side. Season with salt, pepper, thyme, and cayenne to taste.

Bacon: it makes everything better. 

The Result
Top with parsley and ladle into a nice warm bowl, and what you end up with is a delicious, hearty, savory, somewhat sweet, bacony soup. It's really one of the best ways to enjoy a cold winter night. Love bacon? Love potato? Love corn? If so, this soup is for you.

Enjoy!