Sweet corn, chopped carrot, browned bacon and scallions are stirred in chicken broth lightly thickened with roux made by combining butter with rendered bacon fat.
Cook’s notes
What’s so special about this soup? Oh, everything. The flavors, the colors, the texture. The broth especially which was made by simmering a whole ear of sweet corn in chicken broth for half an hour. A whole ear of corn? Not corn kernels? Yes, a whole ear and not just the kernels.
There is so much flavor in the cob, you see. It’s not edible, you will discard it later, but you can draw out all the goodness just by dropping the whole ear of corn in broth. Half an hour is all it takes.
If using well-seasoned broth and salted butter, go easy when adding salt to the soup. Bacon is also salty and, together with the salt in the broth and butter, the soup may already be perfectly seasoned by the time all the components are in the pan.
Corn soup
Ingredients
- 6 cups chicken bone broth
- 1 ear sweet corn
- 1 small carrot peeled and chopped
- 4 rashers unsweetened bacon cut into small pieces
- 2 tablespoons butter salted
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 4 tablespoons finely sliced scallions
- salt optional
Instructions
- Heat the chicken bone broth in a pot. Add the ear of corn and the chopped carrot.
- Bring to a gentle boil, lower the heat, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Turn off the heat, fish out the corn and cool.
- Heat another pan, spread the bacon and cook, stirring often, until browned and fat has been rendered.
- Scoop out the bacon leaving a tablespoon of rendered fat in the pan.
- Cut the kernels off the cooled ear of corn.
- Add the butter to the bacon fat and melt.
- Dump in the flour and stir briskly until the mixture is smooth. Cook into a blonde roux.
- Add the broth (with the carrot pieces) little by little into the roux whisking as you pour.
- Allow the thickened soup to reach a gentle boil then stir in the corn kernels. Simmer for a minute or two.
- Stir in the bacon and scallions.
- Taste, add salt if needed, and serve the soup while hot.
Bacon and sausage pilaf