Farmhouse Chicken and Corn Chowder

The weather has taken its first chilly turn of the season, which can only mean one thing.  Soup!  And what's the easiest way to make soup?  In the crockpot!  Or slow cooker, as they say these days.  So go blow your nose on a facial tissue, bandage your boo-boos with adhesive bandages, and store your food in resealable plastic bags.  Actually, I think my slow cooker actually is a Crock Pot, so I'm off the hook.

This looks exactly like my *ahem* slow cooker, except for the Rival label.  Found at nu-spoon.com 

Tonight's recipe came from America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution.  I know you're shocked that I've made another Test Kitchen recipe.  I get in phases.  My previous phase was Alton Brown.  Before that it was Mark Bittman.  The Joy of Cooking was my undergrad cookbook.  Betty Crocker was my high school cookbook.  Of course, there were plenty of other cookbooks mixed in there as well.  Anyway, this is my Test Kitchen phase.  Deal with it.

The important thing to realize about this recipe is that it's not easy, at least not by my standards.  There is a lot of prep work to do, and it calls for cooking some of the stuff in a skillet before it goes in the slow cooker.  Yep, you read that right.  Cook it in a pan, then cook it in a slow cooker.  I was *very* resistant to this idea at first.  You should just be able to dump everything in and turn it on, right?

The thing about Test Kitchen is that they are very good at describing why they made the choices they made about a recipe.  You can only read that browning the meat in the pan first *really* improves the flavor before you start to believe it, and before you know it, you're pulling out the skillet along with the slow cooker to try it out.  *Even though* it's a whole extra dirty pan that you have to wash by hand.  That's faith.

Oooh!  Ahhh!

The other important thing about this recipe is that it is delicious.  I have no idea if it freezes well, but I do know it makes good left overs.  The 6 to 8 servings it makes always disappear within a few days.  

What: Farmhouse Chicken and Corn Chowder

Results: Delicious
Source: America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution