Cream of mushroom soup

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 karenkaren 0 Comment

For the last month I’ve been working on my cream of mushroom soup recipe. I’ve made it three times making some slight adjustments each time. I made my latest batch, this Sunday. The two aspects of the soup I’ve been working on are consistency and flavor. In my opinion a cream of whatever soup should be appropriately thick in consistency. This can be a bit of a bear to get right because the vegetables when cooked add liquid. Too much liquid and the thickening agent in the soup gets counteracted. This is especially true with mushrooms which produce a lot of liquid when cooked down. So to keep the mushrooms from messing up the thickness, I saute them and put them aside. Then I make the cream base for the soup. Once things properly thicken the mushrooms go back in.

The second aspect of the soup I’ve been refining is flavor. The first issue is how to get good mushroom flavor and still have mushroom soup that looks like mushroom soup. Pureeing the mushrooms gets better flavor but I lose the look I want. Slicing lacks flavor. To get the best of both worlds, I do both. I remove the stems from the mushrooms and puree all of these plus a few mushroom caps. The rest of the caps I slice nicely.

The second issue is that plain mushrooms can be a bit underwhelming in terms of taste. Cremini mushrooms are better but a different texture and darken the color of the soup more. Plus they cost more. I’ve tried using them or using half cremini and half regular mushrooms. The latter nets good results but I wanted to create a recipe that didn’t use cremini mushrooms at all. The solution? Add 1 teaspoon of umami bomb spice mixture to my soup.

Last nights batch was nearly perfect. So here is the latest iteration of the recipe.

  • 4 tbs butter
  • 3 tbs flour
  • 3 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups half and half
  • 1 8 ounce package of mushrooms
  • 1 tsp Umami Bomb seasoning
  1. Remove the stems from all the mushroom and place in food processor with 1/3 of the mushrooom caps. Chop finely. Slice the remaining 2/3 mushroom caps
  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a sauce pan. Add chopped mushrooms and saute. Add sliced mushrooms and saute. Remove mushrooms from pan and set aside
  3. Melt remaining 3 tablespoons of butter in saucepan. Add flour so it is absorbed into butter and roux browns slightly
  4. Add 1/2 chicken broth and 1/2 milk
  5. When starts to slightly thicken add remaining chicken broth and milk
  6. When thickening more considerably add mushrooms and umami bomb seasoning
  7. Cook 5 more minutes and serve.