Corn Chowder

[Katie Meadow]

I used to make Alice Waters corn soup recipe from her original Chez Panisse Menu cookbook. The technique is the same as her recipe cited above, but she doesn't even bother with the onions. She does add cream, which I sometimes omitted and love just as much. Keep in mind that straining the soup as she suggests makes it very luxurious and not very cost effective. You are left with not a lot of soup. Good, though! You can add almost any garnish: shredded basil, chopped fresh tomato, roasted green chile, chives, and so on. Gotta have great corn to start with, though.

[Jaymes]

Take a look at Alice Waters' recipe for Sweet Corn Soup. It sounds closer to what you're looking for. Here:

http://oursoupbowl.blogspot.com/2010/01/sweet-corn-soup.html

Yes, that's much more in line with what I'm seeking. Thanks!

Having made a lot of corn soup in my life, I would still suggest that you simmer/steep those broken, de-kerneled cobs in that "1 quart of water" before you add it to the kernels and onions and finish the soup.

[Shel_B]

Having made a lot of corn soup in my life, I would still suggest that you simmer/steep those broken, de-kerneled cobs in that "1 quart of water" before you add it to the kernels and onions and finish the soup.

Yes, that has been said several times and I have also said that it's something I'd do.

[Shel_B]

I used to make Alice Waters corn soup recipe from her original Chez Panisse Menu cookbook. The technique is the same as her recipe cited above, but she doesn't even bother with the onions. She does add cream, which I sometimes omitted and love just as much. Keep in mind that straining the soup as she suggests makes it very luxurious and not very cost effective. You are left with not a lot of soup. Good, though! You can add almost any garnish: shredded basil, chopped fresh tomato, roasted green chile, chives, and so on. Gotta have great corn to start with, though.

Lately I've been very spare with using onions in a lot of dishes, sometimes using a milder form, such as leeks or shallots, and playing around with the amounts. I thought I'd do something like that with the corn soup/chowder I'll be making. Getting good, or great, corn around here is not very difficult. It's just a matter of choosing a farmers market or going to one of a couple of great produce stores.

[lindag]

Now that there's so much great corn available it's time for Corn Chowder!

I made this last night and it is incredibly good!

 

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/corn-cheese-chowder/?printable_recipe=10380

[MSRadell]

Good sounding recipe, I like lots of the recipes she comes up with. I certainly wouldn't use the bread bowl however, I think they are a waste. I'd rather eat the bread on the side and not waste it as a bowl.

[Tri2Cook]

7 hours ago, MSRadell said:

Good sounding recipe, I like lots of the recipes she comes up with. I certainly wouldn't use the bread bowl however, I think they are a waste. I'd rather eat the bread on the side and not waste it as a bowl.

Why would you waste the bowl? You break off and eat the soup-infused bowl as the level of soup inside decreases. It wasn't the bread bowl that threw me off, it was the cheese. I can't say I've ever been eating corn chowder and thought "this would be better with cheese". But I won't knock it because I haven't tried it.

[Lisa Shock]

I just looked at the list of ingredients and wondered how much one could actually taste corn in that recipe?

[lindag]

The corn flavor is definitely up front!  The combination of ingredients is a wonderful blend.

And I didn't use the corn bowl either, I'd much rather have the bread on the side (which I did).

 

[BeeZee]

I just made a batch of Mark Bittman's Basic Corn Chowder (which actually winds up having an equal volume of potato and corn) and it is very clean tasting, I had nice juicy sweet bi-color corn. I added diced red pepper to the veg mix (sauteed along with the onion and potato), it adds a nice pop of color. Fresh snipped chives at the end. Made with whole milk, it's not overly rich...but it did need a fair amount of salt since you make a corn cob broth rather than using stock. I suspect it may work well as a chilled soup as well...if I add more salt.

[scubadoo97]

Will have to try Bittman's recipe.  I cut about that much from several ears and frozen it before heading out of town a few weeks ago and have a couple of big bags of cobs in the freezer.   I try to reuse anything I can to maximize flavor although the last time I put a bunch of cobs in the pressure cooker to make corn stock I found it very subtle in flavor.  Maybe I scrapped too much from the cobs 

[BeeZee]

When I cut the corn off the cobs, I did scrape them to get the "milk" into the bowl, also. I also added a bit of tarragon to the soup, it does need something or it just tastes like milky corn. I think next time I'll garnish with some cooked lobster and make it a real summertime bowl.

[MelissaH]

It doesn't have potatoes so technically it isn't a chowder, but this is the second summer I've loved the Serious Eats pressure cooker corn soup. I've never missed the potatoes because there's a ton of starch thanks to the corn. You start by sauteeing alliums, and then add bay leaves, tarragon stems, corn cut off the cobs and the cobs themselves, and chicken broth. Once everything is in, the lid gets locked on for cooking. After a quick cool, the cobs and bay leaves and tarragon stems get pulled out and the soup is buzzed in a blender.

 

I've done all kinds of variations: rendered some bacon and used its fat for cooking the alliums (and added the bacon to my bowl at the end), switched up the varieties of alliums, swapped water for the chicken stock for a completely vegan soup, used cilantro instead of tarragon (and added some halved cherry tomatoes to my bowl), added a sprinkle of grated cheeze, doctored with hot sauce or vinegar when the soup was too sweet for my tongue....