Recipe: Cheesy Potato & Corn Chowder

Last week, I wanted to make Potato chowder. I have three or four recipes for potato chowder and none of them were quite what I was wanting. I knew I wanted to make it in the crock pot (out went the stove top recipe). I knew I wanted it to have bacon in it (out when the one with cream of chicken soup as its base). I thought it would be good with corn. I knew I wanted to use real potatoes in it (not hash browns). I wanted it to be cheesy (not just creamy by using half-n-half). Since none of my recipes were quite RIGHT, I ended up making up my own based on bits and pieces of each recipe. Some of my measurements are more guesstimates that exacts. For example, I put in about half a bag of frozen corn; a bag is 16 oz, so I'm calling that 8 oz in the recipe, but it could've been slightly more or less.

Ingredients

• 8-10 Russet Potatoes (I used 8, which seemed to be about 2.5 lbs), diced into 1/4" cubes
• 8 oz of frozen corn (about half of a 16 oz bag)
• 1 1/2 cups of chicken broth (enough to almost cover all the potatoes)
• 8 oz of bacon cooked to crispy, crumbled and drained
• 1 cup Cheddar cheese (I used shredded but anything would work since it just needs to melt)
• 8 oz of Cream Cheese (about half a 16 oz block)
• salt & pepper to taste

Directions

Put the cubed potatoes, frozen corn and broth in the crock pot - the broth should just barely cover all of the potatoes & corn. Add the bacon and stir it all around. Turn the crock pot on low for 8 hours, or high for 4 hours. Or be like me and forget to put it on high, so leave it on low for about 4 hours and wonder why your potatoes aren't getting mushy, realize it is still on low and turn it to high for about 2 hours.

Using an immersion blender, blend up about half of it. Add cheese & cream cheese and stir around until melted. Add salt & pepper to taste - I probably used about a tsp of each. This is a VERY thick chowder which is what I wanted. You could always thin it with a little bit more chicken broth, or mlik, or half-n-half.

We had ours with homemade English Muffin bread - VERY delicious. This fed 2 adult, 3 teenage girls, one toddler and had an adult size serving leftover. So 6-8 servings depending appetites & what else you have with it.