Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Melt butter in a pot over medium heat.
- Add diced onion and minced garlic. Cook 3-5 minutes until softened, stirring occasionally.
- Add white corn kernels, yellow corn kernels, halved serrano chili, and Spanglish Asadero Elote Seasoning. Cook5 minutes, stirring often.
- Pour in evaporated milk and chicken broth. Bring to a boil.
- Reduce heat, cover, and simmer 15 minutes until corn is soft.
- Remove from heat and cool slightly.
- Transfer mixture to a blender. Blend until smooth.
- Return blended soup to the pot, straining through a fine mesh sieve to remove larger sediments.
- Stir in crema fresca. Cook over low heat 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
- Serve hot, garnished with corn kernels, sliced serrano chili, crema fresca, epazote or cilantro, and croutons if desired.
Nutrition
Notes
- Toast the corn before you add liquid — that 5-minute step after the corn and Elote Seasoning hit the pan matters. Dry heat pulls sugar out of the corn and blooms the spices. Don't rush it or skip straight to pouring in the broth.
- Blend in batches, not all at once — hot liquid expands in a blender. Fill it no more than halfway, hold the lid down with a folded towel, and vent the steam. One careless overfill and you're cleaning soup off the ceiling.
- Don't skip the sieve — blending gets you smooth. Straining gets you silky. Push the pulp through with a spoon; you'll recover most of the liquid. What you're removing is fiber and corn hull fragments.
- Add crema on low heat, not high — crema fresca can break if the heat is too aggressive. Once it goes in, you're finishing the soup, not cooking it. Low heat, gentle stir, 10 minutes.
- Season at the end — Spanglish Asadero Elote Seasoning carries its own salt. Taste the finished soup before adjusting. Adding salt mid-cook by instinct leads to over-seasoning once the liquid reduces.
- Serrano heat is unpredictable — one pepper can be mild, the next punishing. After 5 minutes of simmering, taste the broth. If it's already at your limit, pull the chili early. Want more heat? Mince the serrano and stir it in at the finish.
- Ladle into bowls while it's hot. The garnishes — fresh corn kernels, sliced serrano, crema fresca, epazote or cilantro — pull the whole thing together in a way the soup alone doesn't. The crunch, fresh heat, and green herb are part of how this dish works. Don't skip them.
- Serve alongside warm corn tortillas or bolillo rolls for soaking. This also works as a first course before something off the grill — elote cream soup before carne asada, pollo asado, or grilled chicken thighs reads like a deliberate menu, not a random pairing.
- Croutons are listed as optional but worth doing. Toast them in butter with a pinch of Elote Seasoning and they pick up the same flavor thread as the soup.
- Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 4 days. The soup thickens as it sits — add a splash of chicken broth when reheating to bring it back to the right consistency.
- Reheat on the stovetop over low to medium-low heat, stirring occasionally. Don't let it boil — the bottom can scorch and the crema fresca may break at high heat. Microwave works in a pinch: medium power, covered, in 60-second intervals with a stir between each.
- This soup freezes well for up to 2 months. Freeze before adding the crema fresca — stir that in fresh when you reheat. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator and reheat on the stovetop.