Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'll be showing you how to make chicken chowder.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here!
And today, I am so excited to be sharing another carefully tested, well researched,
and perfected recipe.
Today we're making something savory, and I'm so excited to share my favorite chicken chowder.
This is a super flavorful recipe. It's made completely on the stovetop,
so grab yourself a large pot or a Dutch oven,
and let's get started. Now the first thing you need for today's recipe is six strips of bacon.
As you can see, I've cut mine into pieces, and I'm just gonna add this into the Dutch oven.
We're going to cook this over medium heat until the bacon is completely crisp.
Now once your bacon is crisped and cooked through,
we're going to remove it to a paper-towel-lined plate
and we're going to set that aside. Now we're going to want to drain
all but about two tablespoons of bacon grease,
and you could just eyeball this. It doesn't have to be exact.
Depending on the type of bacon that you've used,
you may not need to drain any of the grease at all.
Now I've found the easiest way to do this is just kind of tilt the pot
and just ladle out the excess grease.
Okay, so I have about two tablespoons of bacon grease left in the pot.
This is great. We are going to be building our chicken chowder on this bacon grease base,
which is going to make it taste absolutely amazing.
You're really going to love it. But, we are also going to need to add some butter.
We're going to add three table spoons of unsalted butter to the
pot and we're going to let that melt.
Now once that's melted, we're going to add one medium yellow onion.
You can see this is nicely chopped. Add one cup of diced red pepper
—red bell pepper and about a tablespoon of diced jalapeno,
and I have removed the seeds from this jalapeno
because I don't want my chicken chowder to be super spicy.
Now we're just going to cook this stirring pretty frequently until our veggies are nicely softened.
Once they're softened, we're going to add in one heaping tablespoon of minced garlic.
And we're just gonna cook that until it's nice and fragrant. This usually takes about thirty seconds.
Next, we're going to add in one fourth cup of all purpose flour.
And we're going to stir this in until it's completely absorbed.
Now once all the flour is absorbed, we're going to continue to cook this
for about another thirty seconds.
All right, next you need four cups of chicken broth.
We're just going to drizzle this into the pot while we're stirring everything.
We're just gonna slowly add this. Now,
I am not using a low sodium chicken broth.
If you do that's fine, just keep in mind you're probably going to end up
having to adjust the amount of salt in your recipe.
We're also going to be adding one cup of water, one cup of milk, and one cup of heavy cream.
And next we'll add our potatoes. So today,
I am using gold potatoes. They have a nice, thin skin,
so I'm not peeling the skin off, and I've cut these into about one inch pieces.
I'm gonna add these into the pot. We're also going to be adding one pound of chicken breast.
You can just drop those right in there. And two and a half cups of corn.
I'm using frozen corn today,
but if you can get some of that sweet summer corn and cut it right off the cob,
that is even better. And oh my gosh,
I forgot to add my spices. Normally, I like to add these right after my flour,
but we're going to add them right now, and that's going to be fine.
You need a teaspoon of salt, this is just table salt,
three fourths teaspoon of smoked paprika, which adds such a nice flavor to the soup,
a half teaspoon of ground mustard, which again really balances the flavor,
and three fourths teaspoon of black pepper,
and we'll stir these spices in until everything's nicely combined.
All right, now we're going to bring everything to a boil
and we're just going to cook this
until the chicken is cooked through
and until the potatoes are nice and soft and tender when pierced with the fork.
All right, my potatoes are pretty tender and my chicken is cooked through,
so what I'm going to do now is I'm going to remove the chicken onto a plate.
And then I'm just gonna use a pair of forks and just shred the chicken.
If you don't wanna shred the chicken, if you prefer to dice it,
you could do that instead, that's fine. I'm gonna shred it.
And we're not going to add this back to the pot yet. We're just going to set it aside.
All right, now we're going to puree about half of the soup,
which is going to give it a really lovely, nice, thick texture.
Now, if you have a blender, you can take some of the soup out,
take about half of the soup out, puree it in batches and then return to the pot,
but, if you have an immersion blender, this is the time for your immersion blender to shine.
I love this. I use it all the time. I will make sure to link to it in the recipe description.
So I'm just going to use this to puree about half the soup.
And of course, we're just going to eyeball it. We'll stop once it like we have a good consistency,
but I do not like to completely puree the entire soup.
I like to have some texture there and some vegetables.
Now here's where you wanna taste test the soup
and see if you need to add a little bit more salt or a little bit more pepper
—particularly the salt, as that can vary, again, depending on the bacon
you use and depending on the broth you use and things such as that.
So this is pretty much perfect. We lucked out this time,
so I'm not going to be adding anymore salt, but always taste yours.
And if it tastes a little bit bland, it usually just needs a little bit more salt.
All right, so now we're going to take our chicken and now we will add this back into the pot,
and we'll stir that in.
Now, if you'd like, you can also add your bacon back in the pot right now.
I like to keep mine on the side and serve it on top of the soup,
but it does—that extra bacon does add a lot of flavor,
so you do wanna sprinkle it over your soup. Now let's go ahead and try this out.
Of course, we can't forget that bacon.
And that is how you make my favorite chicken chowder.
I'm really so excited for you guys to try this one out.
And once you do, please leave me a comment
and let me know what you think because I always love hearing from you.
Thank you guys so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
It’s hot, but it's really good.