This recipe will be my official debut into an April of trying vegetarian dishes. As I said in a post last month, I figure there’s more than one vegetarian out there, so I’m going to try something new for the next four weeks.
As I am only human, I’ve already had a challenge with this recipe. What I intended to create and what I ended up with are two relatively different dishes, but in the end it’s delicious, so I’m okay with that.
What was I going for when I started this recipe? I wanted to make my own corn chowder, but without a lot of milk and cream and without the roux (the flour mixture that thickens a chowder). I also wanted to be able to make a lot of soup and then freeze it for later– even I have my corn limits. I was going for spicy, and a friend suggested chipotles in adobo to kick up the heat. That worked.
In the end, the soup is not thick enough to call it a chowder, and it’s actually a little thinner than I would have liked, but I was able to add some cream to make it chowder-esque. As far as the “heat” of it, a friend who tasted it said it was “atomic hot.” She was right, and it was just the way I like it, but my kids wouldn’t go near it. Thankfully that’s adjustable; just use less than the amount of chipotles I suggested below and see my notes at the bottom.
Spicy Corn Soup
Ingredients:
1/2 can chipotles in adobo (less if you don’t want it spicy)
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 a yellow onion
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
24 ounces frozen corn (this is one 16-ounce bag of frozen corn and half of another, but I didn’t have a better way to write it)
32 ounces chicken broth
14-ounce can creamed corn
6 new potatoes cut into 1″ pieces
salt and pepper to taste
half and half or heavy cream
What’s Next:
Place butter and onion in a large skillet.
Heat to medium and stir occasionally until onions become translucent. Season with salt and pepper
Add carrot and cook for another 5 minutes.
Add chipotles and cook another 3 minutes, stirring.
Add mixture to slow cooker.
Add broth, potatoes, frozen corn and creamed corn.
Cook on high for 3 to 4 hours.
When serving, for a chowdery or creamy style soup, pour 1 to 2 tablespoons of half and half or heavy cream into a bowl. Add soup, and stir.
Notes from my experience:
The way the recipe is written, it’s spicy. If you’re unsure of  how hot you want the soup, add about a tablespoon of chipotles in adobo at first. You can always add more, but to take it out is really difficult.
If you want to create a soup that is not vegetarian, you can add four slices of bacon trimmed of fat and chopped to the first step (see first photo). Or, toward the end of the cooking time you can add some cooked shredded chicken or diced ham.
What I like about this recipe is that by not adding the cream to the large pot in the slow cooker, it can easily be frozen. It also makes the cream optional, which may be preferred by some.
I tried to create that chowder feel by pureeing half of the soup and adding it to the rest. That just created a corn mush that was unappetizing.
After freezing and re-heating, the potatoes did get a little mushy. While there isn’t much that can be done about that, it’s worth mentioning. I’m not a fan of mushy foods.
Using fresh corn in the summer would make this a really delectable dish, and freezing it until the cold weather sets in delivers a treat in the early days of fall.
