We're Stewing In It

Fink's Recipe Blog: Stews

I like a good, hearty soup. I'll assume most of you do as well (if you're sticking around to read this). Hearty, thick soups have comfort behind them... plus you generally can put a lot of black pepper in them and that always makes a soup for me. We have three soups I like to make today, two of which are designed for slow cooking in a crock (so you can set them and ignore them for a while). They're good, and let you feast all weekend on tasty soup.

Corn Chowder

Ingredients:

Lots of Corn (fresh can be used, although you'll need to cut it off the cob, or you can go frozen)
Veggies for the soup (mushrooms, onion, peppers, celery, carrot, etc.), diced
Polska Kielbasa (at least a quarter of a round of the sausage)
Seasonings (to taste)
Chicken Bullion (to taste)
Milk (to cover)

Optional:

Flour and Butter (to thicken)

Cooking:

In a large pot, put your fresh vegetables (but not the corn just yet) along with the kielbasa and some oil and sautee until cooked (look for the onions to become a bit clear, almost glassy).
Pour in an equal amount of corn to your veggies, basically one-to-one. Sautee some more until the corn feels hot and done.
Put in your preferred seasoning. As I noted, I like black pepper and a lot of it in this soup. You'll also probably want salt, and then the rest of up to your tastes, but some suggestions include paprika, Cajun seasoning, poultry seasoning, basil, and dill.
Sprinkle in your chicken bullion. I like just a bit of chicken flavor in my soup and I find this is an easy way to get it. You don't need a lot -- I buy bullion powder in tins and just add a small spoon or two for a large pot -- and a full dense cube is probably too much. Probably.
Pour on enough milk to cover the veggies and then probably a bit more (if you like your chowder more soupy). Bring to a low boil and then lower to a simmer, cover, and let cook for 40 - 60 minutes. You want the soup really cook in the flavor of the corn and get that hint of sweetness.
If you want your soup thicker, mix equal amounts of flour and butter, creating a bit of paste, and drop in dollops into the soup (for a large pot two dollops will make for a silky broth). Let it cook covered another five minutes and then pull of heat.
Serve.

I used to get cans of Chicken Corn Chowder from the store (back when I was a college student and that felt like a splurge) and that stuff is so good I wanted to find a way to make my own. I tried a few different recipes and this is basically a merger of the ideas I liked from all those soups.

You might wonder why I don't provide exact amounts of anything in this soup and that's largely because I just make it on the fly and put whatever I want in it when I make it. This is really a soup that feels like equal parts corn, milk, and everything else. So... yeah, there's your measurements, haha.

Most recipes for this soup I've read call for bacon. I like bacon but I have found that the kielbasa cooks better for a soup (I don't like fatty pieces of bacon) and still provides the salty meat flavor the soup wants. It's so good. Of course if you want it to be vegetarian you can just skip the meat. You could even go vegan and do soy milk, you just have to be careful about overcooking it as the soy milk will get weird if it boils.

Homestyle Beef Stew

Ingredients:

1 pkg of Beef (some kind of small roast or a large flank steak, not ground)
Flour, corn meal, and seasoning (for a coating)
Veggies for the stew (potatoes, corn, celery, carrots, mushrooms, onions, etc.), diced
Water to cover
More Seasoning

Optional:

None. You really want to do all of this to make it taste right.

Cooking:

Before we get to the soup we first have to prepare the beef. Get out a crock pot and set it on high. While that warms, get a large, flat pan up to medium heat with a nice coating of oil in it (probably a couple of millimeters thick with oil).
Have your beef, cut into little cubes, set beside a bowl. In that bowl you want to mix equal parts flour and corn meal. Don't worry if you pour too much as you're going to take whatever coating mixture is left when we're done with this and put it in the stew. Make sure to add some salt and black pepper to the mix.
Dunk the beef cubes into the dry mixture and the place in the hot oil. Let it cook until one side browns and then flip. Don't worry about cooking it all the way through as the stew will take care of that eventually. Right now we just want to coat it and unlock some delicious flavors of the beef.
Once your beef is cooked put it in the crock. Once all the beef is cooked, top it with the veggies. Once you're done your crock should be 2/3rds or so full. Pour in the dry mixture leftovers along with any other seasoning you'd like (chicken bullion is again good here, along with more black pepper, salt, and a little dill).
Cover with water enough to mostly fill the pot. Stir, then cover, and let cook until the stew boils. Taste at this point and see if the veggies are fully cooked. If so, serve.

This isn't a recipe I got from anywhere else. I think it was inspired by a watching of some Western when they were talking about making stew and something clicked in my head. "I should make some stew." So I decided to just do all of what you see above because it sounded good and, suddenly, we had a beef stew.

While most of my recipes could be adapted to be vegetarian, I feel like this is one of the few that really wouldn't translate well. Tofu would get weird cooked this way and wouldn't add much to the flavor of the stew. The beef is what sells it as, otherwise, you're just making vegetable soup.

Chili

Ingredients:

1 pkg Ground Meat (I use ground beef but any ground meat, like chicken, turkey, bison, pork, etc. would work)
Beans, so many cans of Beans
1 can of Chili-Ready Tomatoes
Veggies (corn, onion, bell peppers, spicy peppers, etc.), diced
Water
Seasoning

Optional:

I like to serve my chili on Corn Bread, but that's up to you.

Cooking:

There is one step that takes place outside a crock pot and then the rest of is crock, all the time. Firstly, though, we need to get out a large, flat pan and cook our package of ground beef, browning it breaking it into tiny pieces. We'll put this as our first layer in the chili.
Pour on the beans. If you bought "chili ready" beans you can pour those right into the chili (although I don't suggest using more than one can of this kind). Other beans you'll want to pour into a colander first, drain and rinse, before putting into the chili. I like to use four cans total of beans, but then I like a lot of beans in my chili.
Throw in all your diced up veggies. Pour on enough water to not quite cover (you want to see the water but you don't want to drown the chili). Season (chili powder, paprika, cumin, and salt at a minimum), then cover and cook until it boils.
Stir the chili, sample, and if ready, serve. Note that you will want to keep the chili cooking, on low or warm, throughout the night. The longer it cooks the better the flavor (as it picks up a bit of smoky goodness), but you can eat on it any time it's "done".

Chili is one of those meals that you make and then eat on it over a couple or three days. I know people that will take a day to make and cook the chili and they won't even eat it until it's sat for over a day cooking. I get impatient and want to eat it sooner.

If you want that smoky flavor but don't want to wait, unsweetened baking cocoa (the powdered kind) adds that necessary flavor without the hassle. Just don't use too much; a little goes a long way here.

And with that trio of recipes we're done for this week. Next time... I actually don't know. Maybe ethnic dishes. We'll see what inspires me.