Soup 26: Seafood Corn Bisque

I was soooo excited to make this soup. The original recipe called for crab, although the title gives the final ingredients away. I would have loved to use crab but could not find fresh crab meat anywhere (and I was not about to cook a whole crab and scoop out the meat). Despite the audible, the soup cam out amazing! I'd make this again in a heartbeat.

Most of the ingredients I found at the farmer's market. I did, however, have a hard time finding the crab meat. I was not about to use imitation crab, so when I came up empty at Safeway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, I decided to use a package I found at Trader Joe's that had shrimp, scallops and calamari. It was perfect, but I would like to try this again with crab.

First, I had to de-kernel the corn. *Note to self - sharpen my knife.* This got a little scary, but I somehow managed to not cut any fingers off. Check out this video for pointers on how to remove fresh corn kernels.



The next step was to sautee the corn and leaks stirring for 6 minutes. I added the garlic, salt, and red pepper flakes and cooked for a minute more. I then added 4 cups of broth and brought to a simmer. I let simmer for 30 minutes.

While the soup simmered, I cooked the seafood in a separate pan, careful not to over cook. Once the soup cooked, I blended with a hand mixer until slightly chunky.

The original recipe called for half and half and sour cream. As much as I love those two ingredients, I wanted to try my best to keep it low cal. I substituted for a fat free half and half from Trader Joe's and a fat free sour cream. I whisked these in and seasoned with salt, to taste. I added a ton of basil, which really, really added to the flavor. Right before serving, I added the seafood. ALL of it!

YUMMY! The soup tasted great. The fam enjoyed it too. The substitutions worked well -the seafood, fat free sour cream and half and half. I do wonder if the soup would have been a little thicker with the full fat ingredients, but since the taste was still good, I don't think I would add the fat and calories next time. I might, however, add some diced potatoes or something else to thicken it up a bit, or simply adding less broth may work too. But overall, the flavors were awesome and this soup gets 5 stars.






Ingredients:
1/4 cup olive oil / from home
4 cups fresh corn kernels 7 ears of corn /$6.00 / Farmer's Market
2 cups chopped leaks / $2.00 / Farmer's Market
1 tablespoon garlic / from home
kosher salt / from home
1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes / from home
4 cups chicken stock / $1.99 / Trader Joe's
1/2 cup fat free creamer/$2.49 / Trader Joe's
1/4 cup fat-free sour cream /$1.29 / Trader Joe's
Seafood mix / $7.99 / Trader Joe's
3 tablespoons julienned fresh basil / $1.00 / Farmer's Market

Prep time: 25 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour
Servings: 5
Taste: 5 stars
Prep: medium
Cost: $22.76 ($4.55 per serving)