Potatoes are one of my favorite ingredients in soup. They are so hearty and delicious and they thicken up any recipe into a beautiful creamy broth that just wouldn’t be the same without them. Add in some ham, cheese, corn and bacon WOW!
Tonight I made a quick versionof this delicious Potato Ham Chowder from “Damn Delicious” …. I looked up a few different recipes, including some that could be cooked in the crock pot, but none of them were quite perfect so I improvised a little and made it my own. Instead of using a ham steak like she suggests, I used 2 cups diced ham from our delicious 16lb ham we had a week or so ago for dinner that my brother happened to win at work. I also used frozen diced potatoes (as in breakfast country potatoes) instead of taking the time to sit and dice up raw russet potatoes. I cooked them up in the frying pan with the onion, garlic, butter and bag of frozen corn, then when the thickened sauce was ready I just dumped it all in the pot together!
Another great factor to this awesome dinner, besides the fact that it tastes amazing… I only used TWO pans! (or pots) The frying pan to cook up the onions with a couple tbs butter, some minced garlic, the frozen corn and the potatoes. Feel free to use fresh picked corn on the cob with hand picked kernals thrown into the soup or homegrown potatoes dug up fresh from the garden, washed and hand diced right in your kitchen before tossing into the pot… but who has time for that?! 1$ bag of organic frozen corn and Trader Joes Frozen potatoes and you’re good to go… its okay to cheat and cut corners every now and then, I wont judge you. Promise.
I used the large pot to begin thickening the sauce… I started with 1 cup milk and a few tbs flour and wisked it all together, brought it to a boil then turned the temp down to simmer on low while it thickened.
After the sauce thickened up enough I added in the rest of the milk and some herbs and spice. Some Salt, Ground Black Pepper, Thyme, Celery Seed and a little Ground Mustard…don’t freak out, but I seasoned ‘to taste’, just shake and sprinkle and taste until you’re heart’s content…. or should I say, Taste Bud’s content. 🙂
At this point I added the diced ham into the corn, potato and onion in the frying pan and then dumped the whole thing into the sauce. This was the beautiful result:
Sometimes, I truly believe FOOD is a real art form…
Okay, but honestly, we aren’t done. Throw in some cheese… a handful or two depending on your preference… tonight, I used two.
Stir it in and simmer on low until everything is melted/cooked through.
**actually at this point I frantically cooked up backon pieces for ‘garnish’ because I felt it woul be completely stupid of me to take the time to cook chowder from ‘scratch’ and then sprinkle bacon bitz or something of the sort on top, rather than fresh cooked bacon crumbles… so I re-used the frying pan from before and then, Wa-La! time to dish up!!**
I didn’t have any green onions on hand, otherwise they would have been added on top as well…
.DELICIOUS.