Chicken Corn Chowder

Fall.  My FAVORITE season.  The colors.  The clothes.  Season premiers.  Warm blankets.  The yearly return of SOUP to the menu.

Soup kind of has a bad rap.  I blame the invention of condensed soups.  While great for cooking, they're not particularly great for eating after you turn 25 (kind of like canned pasta...).  Never fear, GOOD soup has made a comeback, you just have to know where to get it (or how to make it).  Enter, my Chicken Corn Chowder recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

4 slices thick cut bacon, chopped
1/2 - 1 cup red pepper, chopped
2 stocks celery, chopped
2 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup flour
3-4 cup chicken broth or stock
2-3 medium potatoes, cubed (regular potatoes or combination of regular & sweet potatoes*)
Thyme (1-2 tsp if using dried)
1 lb frozen corn
12 oz evaporated milk
2 carrots, grated**
1/2 roasted chicken, chopped (or 2 hindquarters)
corn starch & water (or potato flakes) - as thickener***

Cook bacon in stock pot over medium heat until crisp.  Remove bacon with slotted spoon.  Drain all but 1/4 cup drippings from pot.  Add butter and peppers to pot.  Cook until peppers are tender.  Add flour, stir with whisk, cook 2 minutes (will be thick - see picture to the right).  Add broth, potatoes and thyme.  Cook until potatoes are tender.  Add corn, carrots and milk.  Simmer until corn is tender.  Add chicken and cooked bacon.  Season with salt & pepper.  Thicken with corn starch or potato flakes as needed. 

* Remember sweet potatoes are generally big.  I usually use one sweet potato and one medium regular potato.  

** If you buy carrots with the tops still on, leave a bit of the top on when shredding the carrot so you have something to hold on to.

*** If using corn starch to thicken the chowder, shake 2 Tbsp corn starch in a small sealed container with about 2 Tbsp water, enough to make a "slurry."  Shake well and then add a little at a time to the chowder until desired consistency is reached.

Can you make this a vegetarian dish?  Yes, eliminate chicken and bacon, and substitute vegetable broth for chicken broth.  You'll have to take further steps to make it vegan (substituting for the butter and milk).  If you're using this as more of a side-dish, feel free to leave out the chicken.  The chicken is meant to make this soup a meal.  However, bacon DOES make everything better, so don't skimp on the bacon.  :)

HOMEMADE TOUCHES:

I roast the chicken myself and then make my own chicken stock.  You, too, can do this.

WHAT IT TAKES:

1 roasting chicken (generally 4-5 lbs)
2-3 carrots, peeled
2-3 stalks celery, washed
Several cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 Tbsp kosher salt (or 1 Tbsp table salt)

Heat oven to 350 F.  Remove the packet from inside the chicken ("you want me to stick my hand in WHERE?  and pull out the WHAT?").  The good news is that someone has already "dislodged" the "innards."  All you have to do is pull out the packet with the "usable innards."  NOTE: we will not be using them in this recipe.  Discard appropriately.

Place the chicken, back-side-up, in a roasting dish (a casserole dish will work).  Salt and pepper the chicken.  Bake 20 minutes for every pound (so a 5 pound chicken would cook 1 hour 40 minutes) or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh reads 180 degrees.  Flip chicken breast-side-up half-way through cooking.  You can cook the chicken breast-side-up the entire time, but that tends to dry-out the white meat.


Let chicken cool slightly, then remove the meat from the bones.  There's no real rhyme or reason to removing the meat; remove the skin and then pull off the meat.  Keep all parts of the chicken, separating the meat from the skin and carcass.  Chop the meat into small pieces and refrigerate until ready to use.

I gave a little bit of the chicken to Gracie with her dinner.  She gave it two paws up.


Well, she would have given it two paws up if she could get her face out of the bowl. 

Place carcass and skin in a stock pot.  Add carrots and celery (cut into 3-4 inch lengths), garlic and salt.  Cover with water (as much as your stock pot can hold), or about 4 quarts (16 cups).  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat slightly and cook for a couple hours, until liquid is reduced slightly.  Strain liquid into a bowl.  I used a colander lined with cheesecloth.  Discard carcass and vegetables.  Season stock with additional salt if necessary.  Use necessary amount of stock for your chicken corn chowder.  The remaining stock can be frozen.  I choose to freeze some in 2-cup quantities and some in ice-cube trays, for those times that you need just a small amount.

You can still have a little bit of homemade without having to deal with the raw chicken (or the "innards").  Just buy a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket.