BM#4 Day 1: Vegetable Sweet Corn Soup

Today is the first day of blogging marathon # 4. This time Valli divided the marathon into three groups. The first group does the marathon form today the 4th to 10th, second group from next Monday, the 11th to 17th and the last group from 18th to 24th. Just like last two marathons, we have to pick a theme and I chose to seven days of soup. I am kick starting the marathon with the famous and most popular Indo Chinese soup, vegetable corn soup. There many versions of the recipe and this is how I made it today.

Total Time: 15 - 20 minutes
Preparation: 5 minutes
Cooking Time: 10 - 15 minutes
Serves: 1

Ingredients:

• 1 cup frozen Sweet Corn Kernels
• 1 ½ cups Water or Vegetable Stock
• 1 – 2 tsp. Oil
• 1 Green Chili chopped
• ¼ tsp. Salt (adjust to taste)
• ⅙ tsp. Pepper Powder (adjust to taste)
• 1 tbsp. chopped Carrots
• 1 tbsp. chopped  Green Beans
• 1 tbsp. frozen Sweet Corn
• ½ tbsp. Corn Starch + ¼ cup Water

Preparation:

• Take one cup of frozen corn, 1 cup of water and blend it to fine paste. Pour it through a sieve, strain the corn mixture and keep it aside.
• Take a sauce pan and heat it. When the pan is hot, add some oil and sauté the green chilies for few seconds on low heat.
• Add beans, carrots, sweet corn and sauté it on low heat for few seconds.
• Pour the corn liquid and the remaining ½ cup of water and bring it to a boil. Continue to boil the corn mixture for another 4-5 minutes.
• In a separate bowl mix cornstarch, salt, pepper powder and ¼ cup of water. Add this mixture to corn soup stirring it constantly so that no lumps are formed.  Reduce the heat or remove the soup from flame before adding the corn starch to avoid formation of lumps.
• Boil the soup for 4-5 minutes or until the soup thickens. I like thin soups and hence used only ½ tbsp. corn starch. For thicker soup, add 1 tbsp. corn starch.
• Sprinkle green onions and serve hot.

Suggestions:

• I don’t like creamy style sweet corn we get here in the US and I prefer grinding the corn to make the cream. In India, the creamy style sweet corn is very creamy and tastes very good. I would recommend using that if in India. You may need to add more water as that cream is very thick.
• To make chicken corn soup, add shredded chicken along with vegetables.
• I did not use egg today and if one wishes, can add some lightly beat egg white to the soup just before turning it off.