This easy vegan corn chowder recipe is one of our all-time favorite soups! Smoky, sweet & creamy, it's destined for your regular meal rotation.
It’s hard for me to pick favorites, but I’ll come out and say it: this vegan corn chowder recipe is one of my favorite soups on the blog. I don’t care what temperature it might be outside – I could eat a bowl of this creamy, smoky corn chowder anytime.
Vegan Corn Chowder Recipe Ingredients
This vegan corn chowder recipe uses veggies and spices to get a delicious creamy texture and smoky flavor without any meat or dairy. Here’s what’s in it:
- Onion, garlic, and celery make up its aromatic base.
- Sweet corn is the star of the show! It contributes to the creamy texture, adds essential sweetness, and dots the soup with crispy kernels.
- Potatoes thicken the soup’s creamy base and add chunky texture.
- Red bell pepper adds great veggie flavor and deepens the golden color.
- Light coconut milk works with the corn and potato to perfect the creamy texture. If you’re not vegan, you can swap in whole milk to make this a vegetarian corn chowder.
- Sherry vinegar brightens it up!
- And smoked paprika and celery salt add rich, smoky flavor without any meat!
How to Make the Best Vegan Corn Chowder
Great veggie ingredients are the base of this soup, but these steps are essential for making it smoky, satisfying, and delicious:
- After you slice the kernels off cobs of fresh sweet corn, use the back of your knife to scrape the juices off the cob. Add this starchy, milky liquid to the chowder to make it extra creamy and rich.
- Blend half the soup, and leave the rest chunky. Because of the starches in fresh corn and potatoes, these vegetables blend into a luscious creamy broth. I like to blend part of the chowder to create this creamy base and leave the rest chunky for texture.
- Don’t forget to garnish. Save a few raw corn kernels and pieces of diced red pepper to sprinkle over bowls of chowder. They’ll create the perfect crispy contrast to the creamy soup. For extra smoky flavor, try topping it with coconut bacon or tempeh bacon bits!
More Favorite Soup Recipes
If you love this plant-based corn chowder, try one of these delicious soup recipes next:
- Yellow Split Pea Soup
- Butternut Squash SoupÂ
- Many-Veggie Vegetable Soup
- Carrot Ginger Soup
- French Onion Soup
- Creamy Potato Soup
Or find more of my favorite soups here!
Vegan Corn Chowder
- 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
- 3 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 ribs celery, chopped
- 1 Yukon gold potato, chopped
- 4 ears fresh sweet corn, husked
- 1 red pepper, diced
- ½ teaspoon celery salt
- ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
- 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar, or white wine vinegar
- 2 cups vegetable broth
- 1 (14-ounce) can light coconut milk (or 1¾ cups whole milk)
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Chopped chives, for garnish
- Reserve some corn kernels and diced red pepper for garnish (optional)
- Heat the olive oil in a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add the onion and a few pinches of salt.
- Cook until soft, then add the garlic, celery, and potatoes.
- Slice the kernels off the corn, then use the back of your knife to scrape the juices off of the corn cob and add to the pot. Add the red pepper, celery salt, paprika, a pinch of salt, black pepper, and stir. Cook until the potatoes are slightly softened, about 5 minutes, then add the sherry vinegar, vegetable broth, and coconut milk.
- Cover and simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 15 more minutes. Let cool slightly, then transfer half the soup to a blender. Blend until creamy then return it back to the pot and stir.
- Taste and adjust seasonings and serve with chopped chives.
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How long do you think this would last in a cooler? Looks like the perfect soup to bring on our camping trip but since corn/potato are exactly freezer friendly I was thinking of making the day before we leave and eating on night 2 of trip.
hmm… I really don’t know, I’ve never tried storing it in a cooler. I guess it would depend how long your cooler stays fridge-cold for.
This recipe is amazing. I’ve made it twice already and I will probably make it many more times.
Oops I forgot to rate it
I’m so glad you enjoyed it!!
I just made this for dinner and it was SO GOOD! I just added about a half-cup of nutritional yeast, which made it even more savory and yummy. My husband even loved it! Now if only I could get my kids to eat anything besides pasta… 😉
If I had to use frozen corn, any idea how much?
I’d use about 3 cups – hope that helps!
This chowder is delicious & my favorite !!!!
Hi Tracy, I”m so happy you enjoyed it!
Thanks, this was a really tasty recipe. My baby and 4 year old enjoyed too. Perfect soup for a cool rainy day.
Has anyone tried this with regular (not light) coconut milk? If so, does the flavor become too coconuty?
I used full fat coconut milk and it was great.
My changes: Full fat coconut milk, 1 sweet potato, 1 baked potato, 1 small bag corn, red wine vinegar, 1 tsp better than bouillon, celery, yellow onion, garlic, 2 cups water, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, pinch celery seed, 1 tsp smoked paprika – I skipped the red pepper
I’ve made corn chowder multiple times but this was the best version yet.
I’m so glad you loved it, thanks for your notes!!
Definitely your creamy vegan corn chowder is awesomeness! This is a great recipe Jeanine, as you know I made it a short while ago and it was lovely, in fact have made it again since. Thanks for sharing!
I’m so glad you loved it!
Oh my! This was delicious – and so easy to make! Thanks so much!
Amazing creamy vegan corn chowder! It looked soooo good, I had to try and make it. I used your suggestion and used ½ teaspoon celery salt.
Kinda defeats the purpose to review by looks. Has anyone actually tried this?
If you skip the first few comments on this thread, you’ll see that nearly everyone else who left a review made it. Thanks!
This was really good but my version came out almost too sweet. The corn was really good local corn so maybe that is why. I also didn’t have the celery salt so maybe that’s the culprit. I thought it delish with no stomach ache afterwards so that k you thank you thank you.
If your sweet corn was really great, that might have been the issue since there’s no added sugar here (although that’s great that you had such good corn!) The celery salt would definitely deepen the flavor – if you don’t have it, I’d try just adding more salt to taste.
Hi Jeanine – Just curious how much potato you used – 1 medium, small or large yukon gold? Maybe it doesn’t matter too much …
I’ve made this a couple of times and love it. I added carrots because my little one loves carrots. And it was great!! It’s a hit with the whole family even my very picky toddler.
I made this last night and was thrilled with the results. It let’s the corn take center stage without being under-seasoned, and the coconut/corn combination is so natural that you don’t feel this is a substitute corn chowder–it stands on its own. Best of all, since the focus is on the corn, the recipe doesn’t have dozens of ingredients and can be made quickly. This will be in heavy rotation in my house! Thank you!
Thank you Jessica! I’m so happy you were thrilled with the recipe!
After recently adapting a plant based diet my husband and I were thrilled to find this recipe. I love to cook and need to start an arsenal of great recipes to add to my cooking repertoire. The recipe was shared with my by a local café that makes a similar version which I had not tried. Ever since I saw the recipe I knew I wanted to make it and we were completely thrilled with the results! My husband said this chowder tasted good enough to be served in a restaurant! To me, the soup tasted almost like a seafood chowder/bisque broth. I followed the recipe with ingredients and as a substitute for celery salt I used a 1/4 tsp celery seed and 1/4 tsp salt to equal the 1/2 tsp of celery salt. The smoked paprika really gives this soup a nice smoky smell and flavor, I added the spices and sautéed for a minute or so, just after my onions were sautéed, to pull as much flavor out of the spices before adding the other ingredients. I pureed have if the soup with an immersion blender. Never knew plant based eating could be so flavorful and down right delicious!
I’m so so happy to hear that you and your husband loved the chowder! Thanks for coming back to let me know!!
Love this recipe! I call myself an omnivore because I love meat but i see the health benefits of eating vegetarian/vegan meals. I used this as the vegan option at a soup sale fundraiser and now it’s a permanent recipe in my binder. I did add an extra potato to make it thicker, and it’s so loaded with veggies I used water instead of the broth. Didn’t notice a difference.
my soup wasn’t as creamy as I would hope for a chowder. I wonder if they only puree the corn. I am guilty of eye balling measurements though.
I blended half the soup so that it would thick and still somewhat chunky.
Has anyone tried this in a slow cooker/crockpot?
Made this great recipe. Thank you. I like to experiment so I took it to a whole another with some tarragon, galangal, and green chili powder. Wow! This is gonna be my always recipe for cream corn soup. Thanks again!!!!
oh that sounds delicious – I’m glad you loved this one, thank you for the ideas!