Experimenting with soups

Yesterday I made corn chowder for dinner.

Except I combined two recipes and threw in some extras.

I started with my recipe from Shannon.

Here's the list of ingredients:
Bacon - nope, but we have bacon grease
Cream corn - substitute frozen sweet corn, check
Potatoes - of course, check
Onion - no, but we have shallots, check
Evaporated milk - nope, but we have regular milk, check

The other recipe called for chicken stock, so I added that too. Then I decided to add carrots. They go in stews and soups, so why not? Then I remembered I did have half an onion so I added that.

And then, (please forgive me) I used the rest of our beef stick. It was just the right amount. I came to this decision because I've used pancetta and prosciutto, which are both similar enough to bacon. Which made me think of salami which reminded me of the beef stick. I diced it into pea-size pieces. It added just enough of that smokey meat without overpowering the soup.

Tonight I made a three-bean soup. The recipe came from a magazine. It was the Christmas edition and this recipe was on a page of gift ideas. Layer ingredients in a jar and give it (with the recipe) as a gift.

Great idea! I've done this with cookie ingredients and my friend Tam from Jersey. That's another post... Let's just say something didn't work out quite right and things didn't quite all fit.

But apparently I saved this page because one of the recipes intrigued me. However, the bean soup calls for dried beans (of course, you wouldn't want canned beans in a jar, that would be messy and not as pretty) so I figured I could make the same soup with "fresh ingredients". Along with the beans it also called for dehydrated vegetables and dried seasonings. Again, all things I could find "fresh".

Since I went to the store, I had more ingredients on hand. I cooked half an onion and added carrots again. Garlic (used that in the corn chowder too), diced tomatoes, corn (hey why not), kidney, pinto and black beans (the recipe called for Navy beans, but I couldn't find any...). I added some seasonings (chili powder, oregano, cumin, parsley) and chicken base (which is how I make my chicken stock, Shannon introduced me to it and it's SO much cheaper than chicken stock, I use it for my risotto too). Since the beans weren't dried, this didn't take nearly as long as the original recipe called for, which is the other reason I made it. I had Bible study at 6pm and dinner needed to be fast.

I would say that my experimenting with both soups paid off. I'm really not a fan of broth-y soups, but I liked both of these (I wouldn't say my corn chowder was really creamy, since I used 1% milk and the chicken stock, it was a little more broth-y). They were both healthy. We didn't add anything to either of them, of course cheese and nachos would be a delicious with the three-bean soup, if you don't care about calories. They both had good flavor.

I'm proud of myself for doing this. I wasn't afraid and I didn't ruin anything. Now I have to go write down what I did on the recipe cards before I forget.