Creamy Corn Chowder

Sometime many years ago, probably ten or more, I made a corn chowder that I absolutely loved.  Being young and thoughtless, I never kept track of the recipe book I saw it in or what was in it and when the urge recently struck me to make it again, I couldn't find a single recipe that sounded similar.

So.  To the labratory.

This is a straight-from-the-lab, no recipe influence, "I just think it tastes right", SSwS recipe.

Enjoy!

Ingredients:
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 small onion, diced (I prefer a finer dice to spread the flavor around better, but whatever works for you)
3 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken broth
3 cups (roughly) corn kernals, either stripped off the cob fresh or THAWED frozen corn.*  Purely a matter of how much work you want to put in.
6 springs of FRESH thyme**, plus more for decoration, if you like.
1/4 cup heavy cream
ground black pepper to taste

Directions:
Melt your butter over medium high heat and saute your onions until you can see through them (aka, transparent).  Stir in the flour until you can't see any lumps and the butter is all cooked into the flour BUT NOT BURNT.  If you have a gas stove, this may be tricky, so err on the side of underdone if need be.  The flour may stick to the bottom of the pan a bit: no worries.

Add in the chicken broth and stir well, dragging your spoon on the bottom of the pan to push up any flour that stuck.  Let everything simmer until it gets nice and thick like a thin gravy.  (This is, for the curious, a roux.)

Dump in your corn and your thyme.  Drop the heat to medium low and let simmer about ten minutes, stirring occasionally.

Fish out the pieces of thyme.  If a leaf or two escapes, don't worry, but you want to make sure you get the stems.  They don't taste good.

Stir in the heavy cream.

Season with black pepper to taste.

If you aren't serving immediately, drop to low.  The soup may form a skin on top, but just stir it back in before serving, it's better than having a burnt layer on the bottom.  You can keep it this way for about an hour.

Serve hot or cold, decorate with thyme sprigs if you like.


*Make sure you get a good brand.  I like to look for keywords like "sweet corn" or "niblets" (not sure what "niblets" have to do with anything, but they're sweet).  Bad corn makes bad chowder

**Leave it out rather than put in ground.  Ground thyme will make your chowder taste like floor polish.  Don't go there.