Hi all,
I thought I had already written the recipe for Cream of Mushrooms Soup. Appears not. Let’s correct that. This is one of the first soups I got from my Grandmas cookbook. Or cook-notebook to be precise. It was written by hand in her notebook, that had many of delicious recipes. Some of them I wrote down to have with me. This notebook still exists. It is in my Mum’s possession since she inherited it when Grandma passed away. But this simple recipe has been one of my favourites since the first time I made it. It is easy to modify, and you can use any type of mushrooms you’d like. I even made it with wild mushrooms. It is one of those dice-cook-blend recipes. And in the Grandma’s notebook were even instructions how to make Cream of Mushrooms soup with no blender. I made it a couple of times like that. Always came out delicious and creamy.
Btw, this soup is gluten free by default. No flour is used. The starch from the potato does the trick to thicken the soup and make it extra creamy
Ingredients
about 1 lb / 500g mushrooms
1 medium white or yellow onion
small potato
1 cup milk
salt & paper
Tbsp lemon juice or Tbsp sour cream (I prefer sour cream)
The procedure
Slice the mushrooms and put them with little oil into the soup pan. While they are sautéing, dice the onions. They don’t need to be super fine if you are using the blender. Then add the onions to the mushrooms and sauté until the juices come out. I also salt them so that they release the juices a bit quicker.
While onions and mushrooms are sautéing, dice the potato into small dice. You want the potato to cook fast – the smaller the dice, the better. Then add the potato into the pot with mushrooms and onions, and let it cook in the liquid that they let out. When there is no liquid add the hot water (about 1 L, or 1 quart) and let it cook until the potatoes are cooked.
Here is the little video on how I make it:
The Blend
When the potatoes are cooked. Add the cup of milk to the blender and add all of the soup into the blender. Then blend until it is smooth and creamy.
Transfer the Cream of Mushrooms soup back to the pot. Check the consistency. If it is too thick – add water. If it is too liquid – reduce it (cook it out) until thick enough. Then adjust the seasoning by adding salt and pepper. This soup can take quite a bit of pepper. It gets really delicious when it is peppery. But don’t take it too much 🙂
Last addition to the soup is the dollop of sour cream or a Tbsp of lemon juice. I prefer the sour cream, but if you want to make your soup vegan, you can substitute the milk for a vegan version and use lemon juice instead. Both is delicious.
Conclusion
This Cream of Mushrooms soup brings back the memories of me sitting in my granny’s kitchen and writing down the recipes from her notebook. Discussing with her how to make it better, what should be consistency, what I need to be careful about … I get nostalgic every time I make it. But it is a very delicious soup as well. A lot of cream of soups use just plain cream as a main base, and do not have a lot of veg inside. I always strive to make the soups LOADED with the named veggies, and I find it does make the best version of it.
This is super easy soup to make. And I hope you give my Cream of Mushrooms soup a try. It does not take a long time to cook. And you can always blend all veggies in the processor, then dump them in to the pot and continue with the rest of the procedure. This soup will take it.
Enjoy!