Chicken and Corn Chowder

Soup weather is returning. We haven't run the air conditioning in a couple days and the nights are supposed to dip down into the 50s - maybe even the 40s at night. So, comfort food is on my mind. 

A Facebook friend put up a post today requesting soup recipes. I scanned the blog for some and I got hungry. Next thing I knew I was searching online for recipes using some stuff I already had on hand. I had a full bowl of cooked corn in the fridge leftover from dinner the other night, so I thought corn chowder would be a good pick. I always keep a bag of frozen diced chicken breast from Schwan's in my freezer to add to soups, too, so I decided to throw some in to make it a little more filling.

As I often do, I looked around at a few recipes for inspiration and pulled my own together based on what I had and how many steps I wanted to take to make it. Here's what I came up with:

Ingredients:

2 tbsp butter
1 small white onion, diced
1 red or yellow bell pepper (or half of each), diced
4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
1 1/2 cup frozen corn
6 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. oregano
2 cups cooked corn
2 cups milk
1 1/2 cups cooked, diced chicken breast

for garnish:

bacon bits
shredded cheddar cheese
sour cream
chives

Melt butter in a saute pan and add onion and pepper. Stir until softened. Add to pot of boiling broth and then add potatoes, corn, salt and oregano. Reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes. 

In blender, add cooked corn and milk and blend to make a puree. Add to pot along with chicken and simmer about 10 more minutes until soup thickens. Garnish with sour cream, cheese, bacon bits and/or chives.