About this Recipe

A bowl of healthy homemade soup is for many people the perfect meal. It has many benefits, besides the nutritional ones. What is the best soup recipe you know of? We have several that we are sharing here in Grandmother's Kitchen. Soup recipe ideas are as numerous as your imagination allows because with soup you can add many combination of ingredients together and end up with a pretty tasty meal.

There are some recipes for homemade soup that I would follow pretty much exactly as they already have the perfect combination of ingredients and if you want to duplicate the dish, you should follow a recipe. With other soups, like a vegetable soup, you can look into your refrigerator and use up veggies you purchased with plans for other dishes that may still be sitting there. That being said, be mindful not to overpower a soup with too much of anything, just to use it up. Too much cabbage in a soup and that is all you are going to taste. If you are using broccoli, keep in mind, it is better added at the end or it gets pretty overcooked and the flavor is not as nice.

Simplifying food preparation is a great benefit. Making a pot of soup usually means more than one meal so that is a time saver during the week. There is the benefit of less waste of fresh foods you have purchased may now have passed their prime but still be perfect in a pot of soup.

Grandmother's Tips for Corn Chowder Soup Recipe:

1. Leave the peel on the potatoes for more nutrients in the soup. If the potato skins are not nice at all, then its okay to peel them off.

2. You can substitute any type of potato you like in this soup.

3. We used unsweetened almond milk for the creamy portion. It tastes very good, but it does not give the same creaminess that regular dairy milk does. If you are using the non-dairy milks, make sure that you choose a variety that will blend well. Don't use any that have flavorings, like vanilla, or with any sweeteners as they are not going to taste very good in this soup. For example coconut milk may not be such a good choice as it has too much flavor. Rice milk is more neutral, so that would be a better choice. We find that unsweetened almond milk is pretty neutral and almond nut flavor seems to work with most things.

4. Use frozen corn, not canned corn.

5. Let the soup sit for at least 2 hours to really allow the flavors to blend together. You of course can eat it right away, but some foods just taste better a couple hours after making or even the next day.

6. Soups are wonderful for lunches and quick warm ups for dinner on those busy days. Making pots of soup generally mean you are going to have an easy meal to reheat for at least a couple of days.

---

Ingredients

(Print)

Makes 8 cups of soup

1 Tablespoon butter, salted

1/2 white onion, medium size, finely diced

1 cup celery, chopped into small pieces, you can use the top leafy part from the celery tops

a few sprigs fresh parsley, chopped (about a Tablespoon worth)

2 Russet potatoes, large, scrubbed and cubed in small pieces

4 cups chicken broth (946 ml box, We used Pacific organic chicken broth)

1 cup milk, we used unsweetened almond milk, you can use dairy milk if you prefer

2 cups corn, frozen kernels

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Directions

Directions:

1. Prepare all the vegetables. Dice the onions finely. We used the mandoline cutter, you can do by hand as well. Chop the parsley and set aside.

2. Scrub the potatoes with a scrub brush. We are going to use the skins as they add nutritional value to the soup. If there are dark spots cut off. Cut into small cubes. We used the mandoline cutter. Our cutter does not do cubes, so we use the setting that cuts them into french fries shape, then we cut those into small cubes. You can do entirely by hand as well if you don’t have a mandoline cutter.

3. Melt the butter into the soup pot. We used a dutch oven to cook this soup in. Add the onions and celery to the pot. Cook for 3 minutes on medium low heat. You want to cook it slowly.

4. Add the tablespoon of flour. Let cook another 3 minutes on medium low heat, stirring so it does not get too brown or stuck on the bottom.

5. Add the chicken broth. Add the potatoes and stir in. Put the lid on.

6. Simmer the potatoes on low for 10 minutes or until the potatoes are soft. Don't let the soup boil. Once the potatoes are cooked stir in the milk, parsley and corn. Add the pepper and salt and stir in. Put the lid back on, turn up the heat and bring to boiling. As soon as the soup comes to the boiling point, stir again and turn down the heat so the soup is just simmering. Cook another 10 minutes. Once you cream a soup you need to watch it does not stick to the bottom of the pot.

7. Do a taste test. If it needs more seasoning add the additional salt and pepper now. We always like to start with a small amount of salt and pepper in the first stages and do the additional seasoning once the soup is cooked. In this case we added another of teaspoon of salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper.

8. If there is a lot of foam on the top you can skim it off with a large spoon.

9. Turn off and let sit. You can eat right away, but we find if you leave this corn chowder sit while it is cooling down and be allowed to have at least 2 hours before eating the flavors immerse into the soup and it is more tasty than eating immediately. Just reheat before serving.

10. When you are done with the soup, let it cool to room temperature and transfer to a container with a lid to refrigerate any leftovers.

ENJOY!

Return to this Corn Chowder Soup recipe or check out more recipes at Grandmother's Kitchen

An average ear of corn has 16 rows and a whopping 800 kernels! Corn comes in lots of colors that include yellow, yellow and white combined, red, pure white, purple, green and a dark blackish-blue-grey. You sometimes will see red corn chips or black corn chips available from the natural product without any color added. You can purchase some of the various colored corns but mostly you are going to see corn that is yellow. There are lots of varieties of sweet corn and a couple of the local favorites grown in our area are Peaches and Cream corn and Jubilee corn. We have access to local grown corn where I live and you are able to drive up to the farms and purchase direct from the growers. We always freeze some corn each year. In fact we used our own frozen corn recipe for this corn chowder. Learn how to freeze corn.

There is corn for popping and corn for eating. Are they the same thing? Corn for popping comes from one maize variety which is called the Aea may eerta. Although it looks very similar to the corn grown to eat, it is the variety that can be heated and pop up into the wonderful popped corn we all love to snack on. Popping corn has a very hard hull and lots of starch on the inside. The moisture level that this corn is harvested at is the secret to how well it is going to pop. It cannot be too dry or too wet, so although the growing and harvesting process is the same as for corn, the conditions are very specific.

Maize is the common name for corn in many countries. Today's corn crops not only produce the corn we are eating, there are over 3500 uses for corn products including the making of oils and biofuels.