Thursday, November 8, 2007

Chicken Corn Chowder

It's getting colder here (uh...as "cold" as this area can get), and that means heavier soups! This is a chicken corn chowder, which I pretty much made by reading a bunch of recipes and making an educated guess at winging it.

It was, hands down, the longest I've spent in a kitchen actively doing prep work and cooking. The bell pepper had to be cut from the core, then julienned and brunoised (okay, a little unevenly), the potatoes had to be peeled and cut, the onions had to be diced and sweated in the bacon fat that was cooked out of the bacon which I had to cook and chop earlier to be used as a functional garnish, the chicken--oh god, the chicken had to be skinned, deboned, diced into manageable sizes, then cooked in more bacon fat (that's what happens when you buy cheap chicken that isn't skinned and deboned for you), etc. From start to finish, this soup had me working for around 2 hours.

It was so cool.


It turned out pretty good, although it was a little bit on the liquidy side, and I like nice thick soups. Heavy cream, potatoes, and beurre maniƩ were used to thicken.

It wasn't enough.


Crumble some bacon on top, and enjoy while you curse the pathetic excuse for "cold" weather in southern california. Winter can't come fast enough.

2 comments:

  1. oh comon man. 2 hours? you gotta hone your knife skillz more. haha get it? hone? you probably shoulda heated up the whole soup a bit more just to be sure. cause when flour heats up enough, it releases all its long starch chains. either that or you didnt use enough flour.

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  2. Yes, I know how flour works. I heated the soup all the way to a boil after adding the beurre maniƩ (which isn't so good, cause I added the heavy cream already, but whatever). I think I just didn't add enough.

    And the 2 hours includes all the cooking and simmering.

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