I love corn chowder. I miss all the creamy soups that usually have dairy in them like chicken wild rice and corn chowder. I have successfully re-created a really delicious chicken wild rice soup, which I believe I still need to do a post on, but I was so nervous to attempt corn chowder for some reason. Any time I was out to dinner with friends or with my husband I was hoping they would have it on the menu but no such luck as of late so yesterday I decided I would give it a go! It was a success and it turned out better than I could have imagined. Always feels so good when that happens. I kind of got to the final ‘recipe’ in a round about way so hopefully you can follow along.
I started with this recipe but was confused when it said polenta so I made an unnecessarily huge batch of polenta and added that until I got the right thickness in my soup. If I had to do it over again I would do it the same way but would cut the batch of polenta in half. Here’s a rough idea of what my recipe was like:
In a smaller pot – start the POLENTA:
- 3 cups of water
- 1/2 teaspoon of salt
- 1 cup of cornmeal
- 1 tablespoon of butter or substitute (i used earth balance)
Boil the water with the salt in it. Once water is boiling add the cornmeal and stir, I turned the heat down to medium low and stirred every now and then for about 20 mins/half hour.
CORN CHOWDER recipe – slightly modified from this recipe.
- 3 cups vegetable or chicken broth, store-bought or homemade
- 4 medium gold potatoes, chopped into small chunks
- 1 cup chopped vidalia onions (I used almost a whole large yellow onion)
- 1 1/2 cup chopped celery
- 3 cups yellow corn, canned or frozen (I used 2 bags of frozen corn – almost 4 cups)
- 1/3 cup polenta (once my polenta was made (see above) I just scooped it into the soup until I liked the consistency)
- 1 cup plain unsweetened soymilk (I used Silk unsweetened – the one in the green carton)
- Salt and pepper, to taste
I wanted my soup to be pretty chunky and thick so I just added a bit more veggies than the recipe called for but if you want a more runny soup then I would stick with the original recipe.
1. In a 3-quart stockpot, bring the broth to a boil and add the potatoes, onions and celery. Cook until the potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes.
2. Add the corn and polenta. Cook for 20 minutes more at a low boil.
4. Add the soymilk, salt and pepper, cooking until desired thickness and temperature.
food allergies + a toddler 