• 1 package bacon (reserve 4-5 strips for soup topping)
• 1 onion; diced
• 3-4 cloves of garlic; diced
• 5 – 6 medium sized yellow potatoes; washed, peeled and cut
• 1 carton (900mL) no salt added chicken stock (6 cups) 
• bundle of kale leaves; washed 
• 1 cup of milk or cream (optional)

1. Prep ingredients. Wash, peel and cut potatoes. Dice garlic and onions. 
2. Prep kale leaves by cutting off the hard stems and keeping only the leaves. Wash and dry kale leaves.
3. Turn on the saute mode of the Instant Pot and place 6-7 strips of bacon inside. If making this recipe on the stove top, use a heavy bottomed dutch oven or similar. Remember to reserve a few pieces to cook later. 
4. Saute until the bacon is partially cooked and then add in the diced onions and garlic. 
5. Continue stirring until the bacon pieces are cooked and the onion has browned (about 8 minutes).
6. While still on saute mode, add in the potato pieces and stir for a minute.
7. Turn off saute mode and add in the chicken stock.
8. Switch to slow cook mode and allow the soup to slow cook for 8 hours. 
• pressure cooking: use the pressure cook mode and pressure cook the soup for approximately 12 minutes. Allow to naturally release. 
• stove top: turn element to high and then once the soup bubbles turn down to a simmer. Allow soup to cook uncovered on the stove top for at least an hour or until the potatoes have softened. Stir occasionally. Use a fork to check softness.
9. While soup is cooking, fry reserved strips of bacon in a separate pan. Fry until crispy. Take off pan and pat dry bacon between sheets of paper towels. This helps to remove extra bacon oil. Break into smaller pieces when cool.  (reserve bacon oil for other cooking adventures).
10. After the soup is finished cooking, blend soup until smooth. Use a stick blender or carefully transfer to a blender (vitamix or similar) to blend until desired consistency.  
11. Transfer soup back to the instant pot, and turn back onto saute mode. Once the soup bubbles add in a handful of kale leaves. As the soup is still hot it will slightly cook down the kale leaves. 
12. Add in a cup of milk or cream if using at this stage. 
13. Assemble your soup. Pour into your favourite bowl (in my case one of my newest wheel thrown bowls) and top with crispy bacon and kale.

one of the biggest wheel thrown bowls I have made so far! Isn’t it lovely?

Crispy Mushroom Arancini sitting in one of my wheel thrown pots.

This is a super quick recipe that I hope you will make. It is perfect for a rainy day or any day for that matter. The savoury bacon pairs perfectly with the “healthy veggie” kale flavour. You can control the hearty-ness of the soup with the amount of potatoes you used. The addition of the cream or milk does make this soup more creamy, but it is optional.

After a brief hiatus, I am once again joining Cook the Book Fridays group through cooking through Dorie Greenspan’s Every Day Dorie. This time it is a fresh corn off the cob chowder. Over the past few months I have increasingly loved going to Farm Boy for all of our groceries; especially fresh vegetables!

Dan and I prepped the recipe this morning and by noon we were able to have it for lunch (taking us roughly one hour to prep and cook). Dorie’s recipe involves splitting the corn kernels, garlic and onions into two separate bowls to start. One bowl will eventually be the start of the corn chowder, while the other bowl is for the toppings (corn, onion, garlic along with the bacon).

To maximize time, while the soup was cooking on the stove (potatoes, corn, chicken stock and some sprigs of thyme), we also cooked the bacon in the cast iron. In Dorie’s recipe she describes cooking the soup first, and then after blending up the soup (with cobs & stringy herbs discarded) to start on the toppings.

While the rest of the soup simmered away, we multi-tasked! Cooked the bacon, and then the remaining garlic, onion and corn on the cast iron in the remaining bacon fat.

For serving, I scooped the blended soup into bowls then added in some cubed cooked potatoes, the corn topping followed by the bacon.  For this bowl, I added in some kale for extra colour and flavour as we had a kale caesar salad to accompany the soup.  

I would definitely make this recipe again. Though, I am sure that only fresh corn cobs will do. However, I am sure that in a pinch canned corn kernels will work too.  I do love cooking the cobs in the soup to add further flavour. The corn also stayed nicely crisp and sweet. I should also note that I ended up using mostly chicken stock with 1 cup of water mixed in for my soup as I didn’t have any chicken cubes.  As for the bacon (though not always necessary for soups), it gave this corn chowder soup the additional salt flavour it needed. Also, how could we say no to bacon?

Plus, it is a real treat to be able to cook this recipe with fresh corn from Ontario. I’ll have to try again when we are back in Alberta to compare.

Hope you enjoyed this recipe and will make it yourself. It’s found in page 72 of Dorie Greenspan’s Everday Dorie! Even better, I found the recipe on Dorie Greenspan’s site. 

Also do check out how everyone else from Cook the Book Fridays did on this recipe!