Potato, Bacon, & Corn Chowder

I make a lot of soup.

It's winter and all that, but even when it's not, I make a lot of soup. I like soup. It's easy, filling, and when I'm having a day where eating just sounds awful, it tends to be really simple to get down.

But that means I need to come up with new soup recipes quite a lot, because I also crave variety.

This is probably not the healthiest recipe ever, but it's good. You could add something green to it if you wanted, I suppose. (Actually, I bet that throwing raw asparagus in for just a few minutes cook at the end would be really good. I may try that when I re-heat this)

The canned soup is totally optional. It's the food of my people, but I still try to limit how much I use, because it can be a huge crutch. If you do skip it though, I'd increase the milk and cream by a little, maybe 1 1/3 c of each instead, just to make up for it.

Also, with this recipe, go with low sodium broth if you can, because there's a lot of very salty things in the soup itself, and and it can end up pretty overkill.

(I wrote this a week ago, but never posted it. Turned out it was really good!)

Very loosely inspired by this recipe.

Potato, Bacon, & Corn Chowder

Ingredients
1 large yellow onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, finely chopped
2-3 ribs celery, finely chopped
4-5 med/large red potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/4 inch cubes
1 block cream cheese
1 can sweet corn (fresh corn would be better for this, but it's very out of season)
1 lb bacon, finely diced
~5 c. chicken broth (low sodium is smart here because of all the salt in the bacon)
1 c. whole milk
1 c. heavy cream
1/2 - 1 c. dry white wine
(optional) 1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 tsp white pepper
black pepper to taste
green onions or chives for serving

How to:
- In a large soup pot, sauté your bacon. You want it pretty crispy, right at the edge of too done.
- Add onions, carrots, celery. Cook till very soft and translucent. As always, longer is better. Like 20 minutes?
- Add white wine to de-glaze pan, add white pepper, then turn up heat and cook till alcohol smell cooks off (~5 min)
- Add cream cheese. Cook till melted and incorporated.
- Reduce heat to low/medium, add potatoes, broth, and canned soup (if you're using it). I like fairly thin soup, so I tend to go with larger amounts of broth than most people prefer. Remember you're adding 2 more cups liquid, and adjust based on your preference
- Cook on medium(ish) till potatoes are very tender, but not falling apart.
- Reduce heat to low, add corn, milk, and cream.
- Add salt and black pepper to taste.
- Cook 10 minutes, but be careful not to let it boil. Keep it really low, just to incorporate everything
- top with thinly sliced green onion, or diced chives