49. Crock Pot Corn Chowder

A while back I came across a blog written by “the Crockpot Lady” (http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/). She used her crock pot every day for a year and shared her recipes on her blog! She’s now writing a book. I discovered her blog just about at the end of her year of crock potting, so I wasn’t one of her daily followers. She has a nice index of all her recipes on the blog so it seems to be a great resource for all kinds of recipes. I found this recipe for Corn Chowder there. The Crock Pot Lady gave credit to Slow Cookers for Dummies for the original recipe although she says she has made some changes to it.

Crock Pot Corn Chowder

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 small onion

1 peeled and chopped carrot

1 red pepper

1 medium potato

1 16 oz bag of frozen corn

2 quarts of chicken stock

Finely chop the onion and brown in a tablespoon of olive oil in a medium saucepan. The onion should be cooked, but not totally translucent since it will continue to cook in the crock pot.

Finely chop the carrot and the red pepper.

Wash and coarsely chop the potato (either peeled or unpeeled)

Dump all the chopped vegetables in the crock pot. Add the entire bag of frozen corn. Empty both cartons of the chicken broth on top.

Plug in crock pot, set on high for 4-5 hours or low or 8-9 hours.

Use a hand blender to “chowderify” (the crock pot lady’s word!). If you don’t have a hand blender, you can VERY CAREFULLY pour into a blender and pulse to desired consistency in small batches.

Changes and shortcuts:

I tried chopping everything the night before so I could save some time in the morning. This was a big time saver, but if you do the same—wait and peel and chop the potato in the morning. I didn’t think ahead on this one and the potato discolored overnight. Before eating this soup, I added some Tabasco sauce and a little bit of red pepper flakes.

Results:

I’m not crazy about this soup. It was kind of bland. I tried to spice it up with the Tabasco and red pepper flakes—but it was still rather blah. It makes a lot of soup. Tasted like I opened a can of creamed corn and called it soup. I think I’m going to chop up some more potato, boil it, and add it so there is some substance to the soup. This soup definitely needed some crumbled saltines in it!

Keeper? Probably not