Wild Rice Corn Chowder with Smoked Salmon Recipe

Wild Rice Corn Chowder with Smoked Salmon Recipe So many Salmon recipes, which one to choose, well I found a great one, this is a terrific soup recipe, it’s called Smoked Salmon Wild Rice Corn Chowder and I think you’re going to love it. It’s very easy, the components go together very quickly and I’m going to get started right now. All you have to do is take frozen corn, or fresh corn if you have it and put it in your food processor. Now, when corns is on season, I’ll take it right off the cob and it’s just delicious but if you don’t have corn and this is not the time of year then we will actually just use the frozen and it’s perfect. Now, I’m taking some chicken stock and just pour in that right in to Cuisinart. I’m going to add that and whirl it up. What I’m looking for is actually to have a—not too smooth but I don’t want a real rough cut or coarse cut. And what I try to do it smooth as possible. The reason is because this is going to release some of the starches and also this helps to thicken the soup. So, I’m not adding too much cream. Looks really good to me and I’m going to give it one quick whirl. Great, so I’m going to go over the stove. I’m going to take this with me because I’m going to need this a little bit later. But I think you can see that, that’s our really nice look. It’s kind of chunky but still not too coarsely chopped. I’m going to turn on my stove. I’m going to turn on the front burner and I’m going to add a little bit of vegetable oil to this soup pot. Now, one thing that I’m looking for with the vegetables is I don’t want to caramelize these vegetables. What I want to do is just sweat them and what I will do is I won’t heat up the pot. I’m just going to add my oil into a cold pan. And the reason I’m doing it is I don’t want to sauté. Sauté actually means “to jump”. So that means when the product heats the pan it’s going to jump. I don’t want that. I want to sweat these so I’m going to try to bring out as much flavors as possible. Let’s stir this around nicely and they become nice and translucent and now, I can smell the onions now, it already smells like something good as cooking. I’m going to turn off the heat just a little bit. Now, I think I failed to mention what incredible ingredients we have in this soup and we actually have when they actually add to this. The onions, we’re going to do some carrots, We’ve got some wild rice, we got smoked salmon and we also have some cream to just actually bring up the flavor a little bit and of course our pureed corn. This corn is actually use as a garnish so you can see the whole shape, that’s what I’m looking for, for a chowder. I don’t know about you but I love soup. It is so comforting and I can have it all throughout the year. I can make soup in the summer because I actually make fruit soups as well as Gazpachos but this in one of my favorite winter and falls soups because it’s so easy and it comes together so quickly and if you have a lot of salmon on hand, this is great. And smoked salmon is specifically good at this. I would recommend that any other kinds of salmons except for smoked, because you really want to have that earthy woodsy flavor. These onions are looking really good. Now, I’m going to add my carrots and give those a quick stir, and this is going to take probably another five to six minutes. They’re actually gets the carrots to cook a bit. Okay our carrots and onions have wilted nicely. There’s a nice, there’s an actual nice translucency on the onions. Okay, I’m going to add some broth, I have some broth over here to the carrot and the onion mixture and then I’m also going to add that puree mixture that we just put together in the food processor. I’m going to make sure I get every little bit out of here. The milk from the corn is really nice. The corn milk I should say. I’m going to give this a stir and this is a great to improvise too, you can add different types of herbs. I'm going to turn up my heat and I’m to add some fresh thyme. I love thyme in soups. Especially this kind of soups that is kind of wonderful, imparts a beautiful flavor. The nice way to get rid of the time thyme leaves without having to do any chopping. And so just take a nice woody stock, hold it at the very tip and then pull back and all the leaves and you just drop right in and you don’t have to worry about chopping. I’m pretty generous with my herbs especially the fresh herbs. The dried herbs, you have to—you should really cut back but with the fresh herbs, you can use almost twice as much. And you know what, I think just for fun. I’m going to add this whole stock in here. And I’ll pull that out right before we’re ready serve it. Now I’m going to let these flavors melt a bit. It will probably take another five minutes and I will continue with the rest of the soup. The soup is almost ready. Okay our soup has been simmering for a couple of minutes now and I’m going to add our garnishes. We’re almost done. I going to add the corn right here in the pot and that’s going to get a lot of great texture. Stir that up. I mean, I’m going to add my half and half or you can use cream but I’m using half and a half. I’m trying to be a little conscientious here. This would add a nice richness to the soup. I will mix this all up and then what I like to do is lastly before I add my salmon is to add the wild rice. I don’t like to over cook my wild rice and what I’ve done is I already cook this in some chicken stock. So, it really retained a lot of its actual texture. It’s very crunchy and chewy if you know I needing that wild rice; you actually know that it’s a seed that not rice at all so I’m going to put this in here. That looks delicious and interesting, beautiful. Very nice. Now, if this is in the consistency that you’d like and you want it thinner or thicker. You can continue to reduce to thicken it up or you can add more stock or more half and half if you’d like. This looks pretty good to me so I’m going to leave it as is. I’m not going to sauté this because we’re going to putting the salmon in but I am going to add some pepper now. Freshly ground of course, this soup also freezes really well and a lot of times I’ll just put it in the freezer and pull it out for maybe next week’s lunch or dinner, it’s wonderful to have on hand and Is really quite an elegant soup, I’ve serve this many times for Thanksgiving but mostly when I have a lot of salmon around. So, I’m going to grab my salmon and I’m going to leave a little bit left over so I can garnish my mugs. And I’m just going to put this in here by I don’t—if you can see the textures to salmon, I haven’t crumbled it up, I actually like the large pieces. I think they had more interest to the soup. And again put as much or as little as you want but I like a lot of salmon in mind, and that smokiness, it’s delicious. There we go. And I’m going to return this down and let this simmer but I’m not going to put in some mugs for you to see. They probably know that I like to do things a little different but of course you can put this in a soup bowl. That’s no problem. But I’m always looking at new and new unique and interesting ways to serve all of my dishes and so I went through my cupboard and this is what I came up with. I had a wonderful mug. This is one of my favorite mugs. My little cow mug and I think it’s very appropriate because while there is cream in here or actually half in half. Now, I could see sitting around the fire, having friends over for dinner. Maybe, you’ve just coming from skiing or maybe fly-fishing or having an interesting little tea mug. That’s always nice, smaller serving but you probably haven’t used your tea mugs in awhile. Little coffee cups. Why not use them now? Now, I found this wonderful—actually a latte cup. Boy this chowder looks good and it smells terrific. And last but not the late, why didn’t a wine goblet. I have this very interesting wine goblet, so I thought you know what that be fun to serve out soup plus we’ll be able to see all the colors. And that’s a generous portion in too. I'm going to have my spare of time to remind everybody what spice is in there or herb is in there. We got the salmon on that. So there we have it, Smoked Salmon Wild Rice Corn Chowder. I think you’ll enjoy it.