Fragrant mushroom soup for lunch or supper warms us up as the days grow chillier. Lucky me, I have a mushroom grower just around the corner who brings his products to our little farmer’s market: shitake, chestnuts, blue oysters, lion’s manes—many sorts of mushrooms that grocery stores don’t usually carry. Each has its own unique flavor or texture, and all make a wonderful soup, as would anything you might find in the produce aisle.
Turns out that mushroom is remarkably easy soup to make: it helps having chicken or vegetable stock on hand, milk, butter, a little onion, and of course, mushrooms. And cream or sour cream. If you like tarragon, you can add some of that. I like a little sherry in cream soups, and pea soup, too, for that matter.
The base for this cream soup starts with butter, olive oil, and onion cooked together, then has flour stirred in and hot stock added. This style of sauce is called velouté while sauce using only milk is a standard cream sauce. For mushroom soup, you add milk to the velouté. The mushrooms go in later after you chop them up. How much cream you add is up to you and, I guess, your cardiologist.
This time around I used chestnut mushrooms, little caps on long stalks, a kind of golden brown color. But don’t forget you can use plain old mushrooms from the store. I used my food processor, pulsing to chop them. You might prefer to chop them a little more coarsely with a knife. Mushrooms have so much water in them, that when you add them to the soup, you’ll be adding liquid, and the mushrooms become tasty flecks.
If you want, you can make the soup a day before to let the flavors mingle. Then when you are ready to serve, add the cream and sherry, and without allowing it to boil, bring it to just under a simmer.
A bonus: you can make your own cream of mushroom sauce by adding the mushrooms to the butter, onion, and flour mixture, cooking them together then adding just enough milk to make a thick sauce.
Serve the soup in a mug and wrap your hands around it to warm them, then eat the soup to warm your innards. Mmmm.
Mushroom Soup
Serves four
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock or broth
2 cups milk
2 cups chopped mushrooms, caps and stems
¼ teaspoon salt
A couple shakes or grinds of black pepper
1 tablespoon (or splash) of dry sherry, or more to taste
½ cup heavy cream
Over a medium heat, melt the butter and olive oil together in a heavy bottomed saucepan, and add the onion.
Cook onion briefly until it begins to soften, then stir in the flour cooking until you see bubbles form, then stir in the hot broth or stock.
Cook together until the mixture thickens, then add in the milk, stirring constantly.
Add the mushrooms and cook for ten or fifteen minutes.
Stir in the salt and pepper, taste and add more salt and pepper, if desired.
Before serving, add the sherry and cream, raise the heat but do not allow to boil. Taste again, adjust seasonings if needed.