I’ll start off by saying this is not the French way of doing this soup. The proper, or French, way would be to basically mix a béchamel with a mushroom duxelles. This is how I was shown, but it’s time-consuming and creates a lot of dishes to clean. Here’s a cheat version — well, actually two: one blended, and one chunky.
Note that I would not recommend freezing this soup. I’ve never tried it myself, but I can only imagine the texture would be quite different.
(Experiment 297) Cream of mushroom
Ingredients
- ~700g mushroom sliced cremini, shiitake, portobello, or a mix
- 35 g butter
- 1 or 2 shallots finely diced
- 2 garlic cloves minced
- 620 ml broth
- 4 tbsp flour
- 145 ml 35% cream heavy
- 1/2 tsp dry thyme or fresh thyme
Instructions
- In a pot over medium heat, soften the onion in the butter, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and mix
- Add the mushrooms and cook for 7 minutes.
- At this point you have 2 choices , if you want to blend the soup reserve about 1/2 cup of the mushrooms aside and blend it, if you go with the chunkier version continue.
- Put the flour in the pot and gently mix.
- Add the stock and bring to a boil while stirring. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 10 minutes. The mix should have thickened at this point, if not let it simmer a few more minutes.
- Reduce heat to low and add the cream, make sure it doesn’t boil. If you opted to blend the soup, it’s not time to add back the reserved mushroom. Note that if the soup is too thick, add a little bit of water.
- Add 1-2 sticks of fresh thyme, stir it in and remove them after a minute. Thyme is very powerful and just 1 minute will give it a kick. Do a taste test and adjust with salt and pepper.
