Cooking at Home: Bacon, corn and potato chowder

Serves:
4-6

Ingredients:

6-8 ears fresh corn, kernels removed (or 2-3 cups frozen corn)
Approx. 3 cups water (or chicken or vegetable stock)
7-8 slices bacon, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 large rib celery, diced
1 lb. potatoes, diced
1 large clove garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. fresh chopped thyme (or 1/4 tsp. dried thyme)
Approx. 1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure:

It’s not necessary, but you can give the chowder more corn depth of flavor by removing the corn from the cobs and then simmering the cobs in just enough water to cover to make a corn broth.

And, once that is going along, crisp up 7-8 diced slices of bacon in a large soup pot.

Take the cooked bacon out of the pan; drain it on paper towels, and pour off about 1/4 – 1/2 of the rendered bacon fat.

Add 1 small, diced onion, 1 large diced rib of celery and about one pound of 1/2-inch diced potatoes and cook those until the onion and celery soften up a bit.

At that point, add one large minced clove of garlic and one tbsp. fresh chopped thyme. Let that cook along for a minute or two and then add just enough corn broth to cover the potatoes.

Let that gently simmer along until the potatoes are cooked through, but not too soft, and then add the corn from six to eight ears of corn and add just enough heavy cream to cover that.

Let it cook along for three to four minutes, season it with salt and pepper to taste, add the bacon back to the pan and it is time to eat.

Hints:

Use chicken or vegetable stock, instead of water when making the corn broth, for more depth of flavor, but remember you may not need all of the liquid for the final soup so use a lesser amount of stock initially and add more as needed.