Sweet Saturday #17 with Crab and Corn Bisque

Today my poor little sweetie is sick, so I'm going to keep things simple and just post this yummy Crab and Corn Bisque recipe I stumbled across on Allrecipes.com.  It's not exactly "sweet", and exactly "healthy", but it's good! My neighbor likes to go crabbing on the weekends and she was kind enough to give me a big bag of pre-cooked blue crabs last week. Lucky me!

I love crab and most seafood in general, but preparing crabs freshly out of their shell is not quite my forté. It was quite a process getting the meat out of those suckers, and I wish I'd taken more pictures, but I was so busy last week with other things as well I had to focus on simply getting the job done! Unfortunately, due to my inexperience with cracking open crab shells, I caught more than few bits of broken shell in this soup, so please more careful than I was if you decide to use fresh crabs!

This bisque is totally worth using fresh crab meat though, I must say. Quite a yummy find, and fairly easy. I had it with the Old Bay-Style Sweet Potato Fries I featured here on Meatless Monday, and it was a perfect combo. Enjoy! 

  
Crab and Corn Bisque
adapted from Allrecipes.com
(serves 8-10)
 

Ingredients

1/4 cup butter
1 small onion, chopped
3 (14 ounce) cans chicken or vegetable broth
3 cloves garlic
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning (I used Old Bay)
salt and pepper to taste
4 ears corn, kernels cut from cob (or 1 14-16 oz bag frozen)
1/2 cup half-and-half
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 cup milk
16 ounces fresh lump crabmeat (I used meat from 7 crabs)

Heat butter in a large pot over medium-low heat. Stir in the onion and cook until soft and translucent for about 5 minutes. Pour in chicken broth, and bring to a boil. Stir in garlic, bay leaves, cayenne pepper, Cajun or Old Bay seasoning, salt, and pepper. Stir corn into boiling broth, then simmer for about 10 minutes. Reduce heat to medium-low.  

Remove 1 cup of the soup, setting aside to cool slightly. Next, pour the 1 cup of soup into a food processor along with the half-and-half. Puree for 30 to 45 seconds, and set aside. 

In a small bowl, stir together flour and milk. Slowly stir mixture into simmering soup. Stirring constantly, simmer for 1 to 2 minutes until well combined. After that, stir in pureed mixture. Reduce heat to low, stir in crab meat, and cook until warmed through, for about another 5 minutes. Allow to cool before serving with Old Bay-Style Sweet Potato Fries, crusty bread, Caesar salad, or whatever you want!

I imagined quite a few additional ingredients you can put in this soup:

• chopped bell pepper
• sliced jalapeno
• cubed potatoes
• extra black pepper
• fresh tomato

Let me know if you try it! 

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