Ina Garten-Inspired Corn Chowder

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

Everybody strips the kernels off and throws the cobs away. They are the best ingredient in the pot.

A bare corn cob is loaded with starch and with the sugars that leach out of the kernels, and twenty minutes in the simmering stock transfers both. The chowder thickens slightly without any extra flour and tastes far more strongly of corn than the kernels alone can manage. Snap them in half, drop them in, and fish them out before you serve.

While you are at it, run the back of a knife down each stripped cob and scrape. What comes off is a starchy white liquid — corn milk — and it goes in too.

Render the bacon, then build on the fat

Bacon fat is the flavour base of a chowder. Render it slowly over medium-low so the fat comes out rather than the bacon burning, lift the pieces out to stay crisp, and cook the onions in what is left. Add the bacon back at the end, on top, so it does not go soft.

Do not boil it once the dairy is in

Milk and cream split when boiled, and a chowder that has broken cannot be brought back. Once the dairy goes in, keep it below a simmer — small bubbles at the edge of the pot and no more.

Blend a ladleful, not the pot

Pull out a cupful of the finished chowder, blend it, and stir it back. You get a thicker, creamier body while keeping whole kernels and cubes of potato. Blending the whole pot gives you corn soup, which is a different and lesser thing.

Storing

Three days. It thickens in the fridge — loosen with stock or milk, warmed gently. Freezing splits the dairy and turns the potatoes mealy, so it is not worth it.