Michele Carder’s winning recipe from the Souper Bowl
Carder's adorable son, Austin, helped hand out samples at the Souper Bowl. Photo by Stephanie Klein-Davis l The Roanoke Times.
Michele Carder, executive chef at Salem Terrace at Harrogate, a fairly new assisted living facility in Salem, made the soup that was voted the best at Sunday’s third annual Souper Bowl charity fundraiser. The event raised some $20,000 for the Roanoke Rescue Mission and Roanoke Area Ministries.
Michele has generously shared her recipe for buffalo chicken chowder with me so that I can pass it along to readers.
According to Michele, her family helped invent the chowder about a week before the event. She and husband Greg held a “test kitchen” event in their house and let sons Landon, 11, and Austin, 5, be judges. It must be great to be her kid! After tasting the first attempt, Michele says, Landon told her she should add more vegetables. Boy, I’ll bet a lot of parents would like to hear those words from their children.
Before her most recent job, Michele owned Michele’s Catering for 12 years. She also owned Michele’s on Main, a restaurant in Salem, and was part-owner of Wasabi’s in downtown Roanoke. After having Austin, she decided the restaurant business was a little too hectic. She says she loves her job at the assisted living center, where “the residents are great.” And lucky, too!
Here is Michele’s recipe. It could be a delicious addition to your Super Bowl menu.
Michele Carder’s Buffalo Chicken Chowder
Serves 6 to 8
If you want to save time, buy a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken and add two more cups of chicken broth. To serve, offer a mini garnish bar with homemade croutons, blue cheese crumbles, celery sticks and extra hot sauce.
1 (3 lb.) fresh, uncooked bone-in chicken
1 stick of butter
1 cup flour
3 stalks celery, diced
1 large yellow onion, diced
1 large green pepper, diced
1 Tbsp. garlic, chopped
2 cups sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
6 cups chicken broth
1/2 cup (or more, to taste) Frank’s Buffalo Wing Sauce
1/2 cup sherry
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. white pepper
1 Tbsp. parsley flakes, fresh or dried
Salt to taste
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place chicken in large baking dish. Rub chicken (whole or cut-up) with your favorite seasoning (she used rotisserie chicken seasoning). Add 2 cups of water to pan and cover tightly with aluminum foil. Bake for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, or until chicken is done.
2. In a large stock pot, melt a stick of butter. Add celery, onion and green pepper, sauteing over medium-high heat for 5 to 6 minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking another 10 minutes, constantly stirring.
3. Whisk in the flour to create a roux. Stir in the chicken broth and juices from the cooked chicken pan. Whisk until roux is dissolved into the liquid.
4. Add the sour cream and mayo, whisking until fully dissolved. Add wing sauce, sherry and seasonings. Bring to a slow boil, cooking uncovered.
5. Pull the chicken meat off the bones and add to the soup. Continue to boil for about an hour, or until chicken has shredded and soup has thickened. If you would like the soup thicker, mix 1/2 cup of cold water with 1/4 cup of cornstarch in a small bowl until cornstarch has dissolved. Stir into the boiling soup. Continue doing this until soup is at desired thickness.
January 25, 2012 - 9:38 AM
RSS feed 
Thanks for getting this recipe Lindsey, and thanks Michele for sharing! Can’t wait to try it out!
Thanks to Michele for sharing her recipe! I bought a ticket for the event and then had a work emergency that kept me all afternoon. I was bummed to miss it but still happy to contribute to a good cause. Perhaps I’ll make this soup and recreate the event at home.
Any chance you’d solicit some of the other recipes? I’m a pescetarian so my sampling on Sunday was limited but the Saffron Crab from Cornerstone was by far my favorite!!
Mayo… really? I just can’t even imagine mayo in a soup. Otherwise the recipe sounds fantastic.
Mayo is one of those ingredients that might sound gross in certain recipes, but it’s basically just an oil substitute in a lot of them. Ever had chocolate mayonnaise cake? It’s awesome.
Let me see what I can do, Cole.
Even money says Carder won because of her ‘wait staff’! What a handsome fellow!
The recipe sounds interesting, though I am wondering about the need to boil for so long after the chicken is cooked.
I’ll certainly try it as described and then I might better understand…
As mentioned above, the more recipes put online from the Souper Bowl, the better…
Thank you! So excited to try this!
The soup was incredible! It was literally like liquid hot wings! If it was on a restaurant menu – I would oder a glass instead of a bowl and drink it! Thanks Michele
The saffron crab soup from Cornerstone was amazing! My son didn’t finish his and I just about dove into the trash can to retreive the last few drops.
Please post recipe.
Lindsey, I thought “chowder” always had potatoes in it. Can you tell me what a chowder is exactly?
A chowder can be any thick, rich soup with chunks of ingredients in it.
@Carol, I am always interested to see what the “Food Lover’s Companion” has to say about definitions. Here is how it defines a chowder:
“A thick, chunky seafood soup, of which clam chowder is the most well known. The name comes from the French ‘Chaudiere’, a caldron in which fishermen made their stews fresh from the sea… Chowder can contain any of several varieties of seafood and vegetables. The term is also used to describe any thick, rich soup containing chunks of food (for instance, corn chowder).