Okra and Corn Chowder

I love okra, and I don’t care if it is fried or boiled and slimy.

What smells better than a pot of soup simmering away on your stovetop. Nothing. Our cold days are behind us but this soup will still be in my menu any time of the year. This would be a great soup to try when the fresh okra and corn start showing up at the markets.

Ya know what I love about soups, well, the instructions are usually about a paragraph long and they are pretty simple to throw together and the ingredients are usually something pretty easy to find at your local market.

This recipe happens to have two of my favorite vegetables — corn and okra and you can’t not like the potatoes and tomatoes and what about the bacon. Everything is better with bacon in it. My husband does not like boiled okra at all because he says it is slimy. How is that different than the slimy oysters he slurps down? He will eat okra in gumbo and soups though even though it is boiled but not just boiled okra as a side dish. (So, I usually get it all.) When I make gumbo, I cook the okra in a hot, dry, iron skillet because that is suppose to get rid of the sliminess before you put it in your soup. (Sliminess isn’t really a work that evokes thoughts of a delicious dish is it?) For this recipe though, I did not do that, I just added in the FROZEN okra since I can never find any decent fresh okra in my grocery. I also added some dried okra that a friend, Sheri, gave me to try.

What do you normally serve with a pot of soup? Salad? Bread? If bread, is it cornbread or a crusty loaf of Italian bread? I chose no bread when I made this soup.

On the day I made this, my project for the day was to organize my pantry (I have two – food and pans). My food pantry gets organized at least every couple of months. I like my spices in alphabetical order, all my foods stacked neat and tidy and containers holding pastas, rices, teas etc. I have racks on my doors from The Container store that hold mixes for dips and other packaged things I usually have a hard time passing up when I see them. After all, you never know when you might need a quick dip.

So, this soup was the perfect thing to make for supper since I could throw it together at the last minute. Hope you will try this on one of your cold days, busy days, or just because you want a bowl of soup days.

I found this recipe at Cooks.com while sorting out my very long list of recipes I had bookmarked on the computer; I was trying to only save the “must try” recipes and this recipe made the cut. And just look at the instructions; they are exactly one paragraph (5 sentences) long and you can’t get much easier than that.

BLAST FROM THE PAST: Sausage and Bean Chowder is one of my sister’s favorite soups and if you haven’t tried it yet, you should. The soup is definitely a comforting bowl of goodness that will help you get through any cold, drizzly, snowy, or icy night.

Sauce the onions and bacon then add the fresh corn kernels.

Add in your fresh or frozen okra (or dried). You can tell mine is frozen by the smoke coming off the side of the pan.

By the time the soup was finished cooking, you could not tell the difference between the frozen and dried okra. (Thanks, Sheri for the dried okra.) Add in your seasonings now.

Add in a handful of cilantro and you are almost ready to dig in.