The Art of Making Creamy Mushroom Soup: A Step-by-Step Guide

As we begin to transition from winter to spring, there's nothing like a warm and comforting bowl of creamy mushroom soup to brighten up our day. In this article, we'll take you through the process of making a delicious and rich cream mushroom soup that's sure to become a staple in your kitchen.

To start, let's prepare our vegetables. We'll begin by peeling and chopping up three medium-sized carrots into small cubes. These will be cooked in chicken stock until they're tender, which is essential for bringing out their natural sweetness. Next, we'll add two cups of mixed mushrooms to the pot, including a mix of button, cremini, and shimeji mushrooms. These will also cook in the stock until they're fully tender. The aroma that fills the kitchen at this stage is already tantalizing.

Now, let's talk about the roux. A roux is a mixture of flour and fat that's used to thicken soups and sauces. In our recipe, we'll be using butter as the fat component. We'll melt two tablespoons of butter in a saucepan over medium heat before adding one tablespoon of all-purpose flour. Whisking constantly, we'll cook the roux for about five minutes until it reaches a rich golden brown color. This will add depth and richness to our soup.

With our vegetables and roux prepared, it's time to add them to the pot. We'll first add the carrots and mushrooms that have been cooking in the chicken stock. Once they've finished cooking, we'll remove them from the pot and set them aside. Now, it's time to add our roux to the pot. Whisking constantly, we'll add the roux to the pot, ensuring that there are no lumps. This is a crucial step in creating a smooth and creamy soup.

Next, we'll add two cups of chicken stock to the pot, which will help to cook the roux further and bring out its flavor. As the mixture comes to a simmer, we'll let it cook for about five minutes until the flour has fully incorporated and the sauce has thickened. This is also a great time to scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon, adding more flavor to our soup.

Now that our soup has finished cooking, it's time to add the final touches. We'll whisk in one cup of heavy cream, which will help to enrich and thicken our soup further. With the cream fully incorporated, we'll use an immersion blender (or transfer the soup to a blender in batches) to puree the soup until smooth.

As we finish blending our soup, let's take a moment to appreciate the aromas that fill the kitchen. Our soup is now creamy and rich, with a deep flavor profile that's sure to impress. The key to this recipe lies in the roux, which adds depth and richness to our soup. With its silky smooth texture and flavorful aroma, our cream mushroom soup is ready to be served.

To garnish, we'll add a sprinkle of chopped fresh parsley and a few slices of green onion on top. These will add a pop of color and freshness to our dish, as well as a tangy flavor that complements the richness of the soup. And there you have it – a delicious and comforting bowl of creamy mushroom soup that's sure to become a staple in your kitchen.

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"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enand welcome back to love your food this week we have a really excellent rich recipe for you this is your own homemade cream of mushroom soup i guarantee you this one will beat the pants off of any campbell's cream mushroom soup you get out of a can really really delicious very rich and we're going to start off by going over our ingredients so we're going to start off with our green onions some carrot some celery and some onion we're going to be using chicken broth for this as well as a little bit of cream that's heavy cream some flour and some butter that's going to form our roux we're going to use a bay leaf some parsley and many different kinds of mushrooms we are using shimeji criminy oyster mushrooms and king oyster mushrooms in this recipe so we're going to start off with our our mirepoix this is the soup base so we're going to start with the carrots and the celery and onion now this is a cream soup and we want to get this nice and creamy and smooth so what we're going to do once everything is cooked is we are actually going to be burn mixing this so we're going to use our stick blender and get everything nice and smooth before we serve it so what we want to do when we're getting our our mirepoix ready is we want to make sure it's in pretty small pieces so that it cooks really thoroughly all the way through so we're going to give this a very fine dice very nice small little pieces so that it cooks quickly and cooks all the way through so there's our carrots we're going to do roughly the same for the celery but we're just going to split it along the length of the ribs and then again just make very small pieces on that now the celery will cook a little faster than the carrots and will not take quite as long and the onions as well we are going to make nice small dice out of this and of these three the carrots will take the longest time to cook now typical mirepoix there is more onion than there is carrot and celery as you can see here so what we're going to do is melt our butter now we're using butter for this because what we're going to do is make a roux on the vegetables so we're going to use this butter and start browning the vegetables or at least start wilting the vegetables in it and then once the vegetables have cooked all the way through we're going to add the flour and the flour and the butter are going to mix together to form a roux which is going to be the thickening for our cream soup so we're going to get that all in the pot we're going to add just a little sprinkle of salt in there as well that's going to let some of the juices come out of those veggies and we're going to give this a good stir so once the butter has completely melted you want to make sure you give everything a good stir to make sure that all those veggies are covered in the the butter and then we're going to add the flour this is once the butter has completely melted we're going to add our flour in there and then just give it a good stir to make sure it's well combined we want to make sure that the butter and flour are mixed well together now's a great time to toss in the bay leaf as well it's going to add some flavor overall and then we're going to cover that and let that cook for a while now you do want to keep an eye on this because the flour and the butter together will start to stick a little bit to the bottom of your pan you want to use a pretty steady medium-low heat for this so that it doesn't burn and while that's cooking it's time to get your mushrooms ready so we're using a few different kinds of mushrooms and they're all going to be in slightly different shapes so the creamy mushrooms we're just going to cut into these nice sort of typical mushroom slices mushrooms shaped slices and we're going to actually brown most of these mushrooms we're going to give them a little cook before we put them in the soup for a little bit of extra flavor for the oyster mushrooms for those really small little pieces we can just cut them in half once you want to give them one flat side so you can get a little browning on those the bigger ones uh don't be afraid to cut those into more than more than two pieces we can slice those up but we're going to leave those pretty much big big big chunks of mushroom now they're going to shrink down a lot as we cook them the king oyster mushrooms we are going to cook very small these are very dense delicious mushrooms but they uh if they're in really big pieces they're actually very chewy so we're going to cut these into quite small little cubes and we're mostly going to use these for the texture and we're going to brown these like the other mushrooms now the shimeji mushrooms these are very interesting little mushroom and we just love the shape of them first thing you want to do with these or any mushroom that you get that is served in their growing medium is you want to get rid of that growing medium because it's mostly uh grain hulls and sometimes bits of chips chips wood and stuff so just get rid of that make sure it's not in your soup unless you like mud in your soup now we are going to take the tops of these and we're going to set these aside we're not going to cook these in advance we're going to add these to the soup raw just before serving until they're cooked all the way through because we just love those little mushroom shapes so here you see we are just going to give that a stir you can see that roux really cooking down to the bottom of the pot and as i said you do want to keep an eye on that and keep stirring it so that it doesn't stick and that the roux doesn't uh get sort of crunchy on the bottom there you don't want a whole lot of color yet or actually at all you don't want to get a whole lot of color in the soup we just want everything to be cooked through without doing a lot of searing or a lot of caramelization you can see the uh you can see the roux forming on the vegetables there it's really really nice everything's getting quite thick in there it's not quite cooked all the way through yet you want to make sure that your carrots are nice and soft this is your opportunity to get them cooked all the way through now for our mushrooms we're going to add a little bit more butter actually a lot more butter and those are going to hit that nice hot pan now they look like they're a little crowded now so we've got all three of our mushrooms plus the stems from the shimeji mushrooms we just kept the tops for the for the soup now that's going to cook down quite a lot so we're going to add a little bit of black pepper a little bit of salt in there and we're just going to let these cook for some time we want to get a good brown we're going to get a good sear on those so we're going to let these cook for quite some time until they get a lot of color and they've cooked down quite a lot and then we're going to add them to the soup once they've already cooked so here we go you can see a lot more liquid has come out of those veggies we're going to take the bay leaf out and you can see it's a little more liquid now those carrots are cooked all the way through they're good and soft they're they're not crunchy at all anymore so now is a great time to get going with the soup part so we're going to add our chicken stock and this is the part where we're going to let the flower finish cooking in the soup so we're going to give this a stir this is to avoid getting any big clumps of that roux which is mostly cooked now and also to let us get anything uh stuck to the bottom of the pot off as well so you can see this has come up to a very serious simmer that foam on top shows you that the flour is just about finished cooking out of the corner of your eye you can probably see some of those nice brown mushrooms in the other pan so once we have that nice and cooked all the way through we're going to add our heavy cream and then we're going to get out our stick blender so this is when we're going to liquefy everything in there so we're going to give this a good blend if you have a food processor or blender you can use that as well if you want this to be perfectly smooth this isn't really the way to do it you would have to put it through a strainer and get rid of all those little tiny bits of carrot and onion and everything we're fine with those little bits uh that's not really we're not going for the perfect perfect silky smooth soup here we're just going for that really delicious rich cream mushroom soup so the cream and the roux have mixed together you can see here our beautiful mushrooms they've got a lot of color as i said they've shrunk down a lot they've cooked down quite some and those are going to go right into our soup and there's a little bit of foam left at the bottom of our pan so we're just going to deglaze that traditionally with mushrooms we're going to use a little bit of cognac but i mean you can use whatever you like for this you can use a little bit of the the chicken stock as well that cognac did add a really fantastic flavor to our soup but if you don't have that on hand or it's not something you want to cook with i mean that's entirely up to you so once everything's all come up to temperature uh the mushrooms are all in the soup it's a great time to taste it we're gonna spice this up a little bit of herbs so we had a mix of thyme and a little bit of rosemary a little bit of oregano as well and a couple dashes of tabasco sauce just for a little bit of acid in there really perks up anything that's creamy and that herb mix you can do whatever you prefer with mushrooms sometimes we use tarragon and whatever we have on hand that we're really interested in that day and now we're going to add those nice shimeji mushrooms on top and you can see they have that great super cute little baby mushroom shape and we're just going to let those finish cooking in the soup they look fantastic really great flavor as well so while everything finishes coming up to temperature we're going to get our garnish ready so we're just going to take a little bit of this parsley we're going to slice that really nice and fine and the same with this green onion so we're just going to give this a good little slice on a bias so you have those very pretty little rings of green onions and that nice sharpness from the green onion is a great complement to that very rich and unctuous soup you can see the roux has done its job it's really thickened quite a lot the cream is all fully integrated the mushrooms are all cooked and hot all the way through so now it's time to hit bowls so we're just gonna put that in the bowl and then on top we're gonna add a nice little uh little raft of our green onions on top and a little sprinkle of that parsley and that's it that's the whole thing absolutely delicious really really fantastic and very rich recipe for homemade cream mushroom soup fantastic side dish really warming on a cold day as we're getting into spring we're hoping that we'll be a little bit warmer but i mean the weather's been a little nuts lately so if you need that warmth this is a great recipe to do it with if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see chef caleb for on the channel please let us know in the comments below and remember to love your food you\n"