Chipotle Chicken Corn Chowder

Today I worked out.  30 minute run on the treadmill plus level one of Jillian’s Ripped in 30.  Here’s to making it a good week.

And I also wanted a cozy soup for dinner so I made up a recipe.

Chipotle Chicken Corn Chowder:

• 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 1 can cream corn
• 1 can regular corn (drained)
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 can diced fire roasted tomatoes
• 6-8 red potatoes (small cubes)
• Chopped cilantro (about a half of a bunch you’d buy at the store)
• 1 red pepper (chopped)
• 4 chipotle peppers (from a can of peppers in adobo sauce)
• 4 T adobo sauce
• 1 T garlic powder
• 1 block fat free cream cheese cut in half
• Sea salt to taste

Directions: put everything in the crockpot with the 2 chicken breasts on top. Cook on low for 6 hours. Remove the chicken, shred it and put it back in the soup.

Now, because I made this recipe up I had to make some on the fly additions while it was cooking.  The soup was pretty watery. Not in a bad way, just more of a broth based soup when I had my heart set on chowder.  I’m thinking you could choose to remedy this a couple of ways.

You could:

1. Start with less chicken broth (next time)
2. Add in heavy cream (delicious but don’t need those calories)
3. Add in some cornstarch (wanted to but didn’t have any)
4. Add in some flour

Ding ding.  Winner is….#4.  I mixed about a half cup of flour with hot water to make sort of liquid flour (kind of a roux minus the fat) and then I dumped it into the crock pot at around hour 3.

This definitely helped thicken up my soup but next time I’ll make sure to use a little less broth and keep cornstarch on hand. Chris thought it was fine but I think just knowing I had to toss in some flour bugged me.

I also whipped up some cornbread, from scratch!  I normally use a mix from Marie Callendar but the last time we made it I read that you could make the cornbread in the microwave.  Um, that doesn’t seem normal to me so I said buh bye to random preservatives and used actual corn meal.

I am such a grownup.

Cornbread
Recipe adapted from here.

• 1 cup Albers® White or Yellow Corn Meal
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten

Bake for 20 minutes at 400 Degrees.

And there you go.  Cozy soup and corn bread.  You really can’t beat it.  Only thing better would be to eat this soup out of a cornbread bread bowl.  A girl can dream right?

PS We will be eating this chowder for the next 3 days at least.  It makes a lot.

PPS as I scheduled this post I realized tomorrow (or today when you’re reading this post) is my half birthday.  6 months left to be 30.