Corn and Hot Dog Chowder

10.23.2012

Corn and Hot Dog Chowder

We turned on the heat in our apartment fairly recently, but the weather has been so sporadic that we keep turning it off again almost every other day. It was in the 70s over the weekend, but now it’s starting to get chilly again. I love chilly weather because to me, it means hot cider, big sweaters, cozy blankets, and comfort food — the little things that I really love even though I’m not a huge fan of fall/autumn. One of the things I love to make when the temperature starts to drop is soup, the ultimate comfort food (to me). For the first soup of the season, I made a corn and hot dog chowder.

You read that right. Now that I’ve been back in Minnesota for a few months, the Midwesterness* is getting to me a little bit — the soup is composed of different cream of (fill-in-the-vegetable) soups, and cut up hot dogs, thus making it Midwestern cuisine at its finest because it’s so hearty and simple. What is happening to me? Well, sometimes you just can’t take the Minnesota out of the girl no matter how long she’s been in New York.

This soup was mainly inspired by sister: she had a hot dog craving when she stayed over one night and brought a pack of hot dogs just to make one hot dog. Because we rarely have hot dogs at home, I knew it would go bad if I didn’t use it right away. I would forget about its existence in the back of the fridge so I figured I should toss it into a soup.

Making chowders in general can be very complicated and/or difficult process, but this chowder is ridiculously easy to make because it requires a slow cooker to do all the work for you. If you’ve read some of my previous posts, you may know that I’m a huge Crock-pot fan since I can be a really lazy cook. You just throw everything in the pot and forget about it for a few hours even though the smell is somewhat torturous — the way the smell lingers throughout the whole house for hours before you can finally eat it. I guess that’s why patience is a virtue.

For 6ish servings:

2 10.5 oz. cans condensed cream of potato soup
1 10.5 oz can condensed cream of celery soup
6 hot dogs, sliced
1 c. finely chopped onions
2 ribs of celery, chopped
1 potato, peeled and diced
12 oz. whole kernel corn
1 c. chicken broth
ground black pepper, to taste
1 c. milk

Combine all of the ingredients except for the milk in a slow cooker. Cook on high for approximately four hours (or two long movies) or until the potatoes are soft. Mix in the cream and set the cooker to low for about 30 minutes. That’s all you need to do. Easy right? To freeze it, store the soup in a freezer friendly container. When ready to eat, heat the soup in saucepan with 1/4 cup water until it starts to boil.

Vegetarian? You can make this soup veg-friendly by substituting the chicken broth and hot dog with vegetable broth and seitan dogs. Hate canned anything? There are a few condensed canned soup substitutes that can be used, like this cream soup base recipe.

*I realize that “Midwesterness” is not a word. But it should be.

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