Soup of the Week – Cream of Mushroom

This week’s soup is no-frills easy, friends.

I found a recipe for Easy Cream of Mushroom on Pinterest recently and realized it had been quite some time since I had a good bowl of cream of mushroom soup. Cream of mushroom is one of my favorites – provided it’s not the stuff from a can. Really good homemade cream of mushroom soup is rustic and earthy. Don’t ask me why I think this, but it’s a soup that feels rugged and elegant all at the same time. That’s a pretty good combination, if you ask me.

The soup recipe actually comes to us from a new-to-me-blog called Salu Salo Recipes. I haven’t looked at too much beyond the mushroom soup yet, but the tagline over there is “simple and delicious recipes.” That’s good enough for me! Click over and check out the site and Liza’s photo of this soup because my photo is…well, it’s ugly. The one on Salu Salo, however, is just lovely and really what drew me to the recipe in the first place. Go ahead, click. I’ll wait.

Cream of mushroom generally isn’t the world’s most attractive soup, is it? But it sure did taste good. Mushrooms, cream…the standard components…and there’s half a bottle of wine in this recipe. Half. Pretty sure if the other half ends up in the chef, it won’t be a terrible thing, either. This smelled absolutely wonderful from the first sauté of the mushrooms and onion in the butter. Adding the wine only enhanced the effect.

Without further ado, here’s the recipe, straight off the page at Salu Salo Recipes.

Easy Cream of Mushroom Soup

Ingredients

• ½ cup butter
• 2 lbs button mushrooms, rinsed and sliced
• 3 onions, peeled and chopped
• A sprinkle or two of sea salt and freshly ground pepper
• ½ bottle of any hearty red wine
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• ½ cup water

Instructions

1. Place a large stockpot over medium high heat. Add the butter, mushrooms and onions. Season with salt and pepper. Sauté until liquid from mushrooms had evaporated and mushrooms had turned lightly browned, about 30 minutes.
2. Pour in the red wine and bring to a simmer. Continue cooking until the wine has reduced by about two-thirds, about 10 minutes.
3. Add the chicken broth, heavy cream and fresh thyme. Stir well and bring the soup to a simmer.
4. Meanwhile dissolve the cornstarch in the water. Add this mixture slowly to the simmering soup, stirring until it returns to a simmer and thickens slightly. If you prefer your soup a bit thicker, feel free to add more cornstarch. Taste and add more salt and pepper, if desired. Serve immediately.

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Now for my notes:

I used a mix of button mushrooms and baby bellas. Love those little buggers. I think they added a nice texture and a bit earthier flavor. I’d be willing to guess that just about any mushroom you like would work just fine.

For the wine, Liza’s post says she used Merlot; I used a Shiraz. A very cheap, very enjoyable Shiraz. Do whatever makes you happy because really, any hearty red will do it.

Shameless self-promotion alert! I used the last four cups of my homemade chicken stock in this. Awesome. I just love having the homemade stuff and knowing everything in that soup was made with love and by hand.

I swapped out the heavy cream for light cream because I just always happen to have light cream in the house. It was completely fine this way, but I can see where heavy cream would make it just that much richer. In truth, I wasn’t totally happy with the light cream version, so I tossed in an extra generous pat of butter at the end to compensate. Next time, I’ll use heavy cream.

I used dried thyme because the market had no fresh. It was fine; fresh would be even better. Just remember to reduce the amount of thyme when substituting dried for fresh. My go-to kitchen resource, The Deluxe Food Lover’s Companion (my go-to source for the kitchen) says substitute one teaspoon dried for one tablespoon of fresh. I find this works pretty well.

We served this with Tuscan garlic bread and some green beans for a side because Kidzilla requested beans for a side. I love that kid. Zilla and I both loved the soup. Well, Zilla pretended to hate it at first. I can’t imagine why this little foodie would do such a thing except oh, wait, she loves to be contrary. But after about three bites, she decided she loved it. It may have helped that the Fab Hub and I reminded her that when she was very little – before she could even speak – she used to happily take the Fab Hub’s rejected mushrooms when we had chicken or steak Marsala. In the end, she liked it quite a bit but decided she’d rather have a dollop of Greek yogurt on the top than sour cream next time we eat this.

Now, as some of you know, the Fab Hub hates mushrooms. Hates as in loathes them. He won’t try them in any form. Since we couldn’t leave the poor man to starve, we gave him some butternut squash soup. I have to confess, the Fab Hub got butt nut soup from a box that night. I know, right? I haven’t used soup from a box or can in like two years. But I think someone brought us this one or we had it left in the back of the pantry and it was a good excuse to say goodbye to the last non-homemade soup. I doctored it up, as my Mom would say, by adding a little light cream, cayenne pepper, and freshly ground black pepper. We also cut up some leftover chicken sausage and tossed it in. That had a nice maple flavor to it and fit the soup nicely.

This cream of mushroom soup lives up to the “easy” in its title. This
was simple and fast for a busy school night. And, well, opening the box of
butternut squash for the Hub was pretty simple and fast, too.We have leftovers of both in the refrigerator to enjoy while we watch it snow this week. Again.

What recipes have you tried from Pinterest lately? What soup recipe suggestions do you have to share? I’m always looking for something new to try. Next week’s recipe will most likely be Sarah’s corn soup – check back next time!