Here is a great comfort food to get you through unsettling times: Cream of Mushroom Soup.
I used small brown baby bella mushrooms in this soup but you could mix things up with other mushroom varieties. This recipe uses a lot of mushrooms and yields an intensely mushroomy (is that a word?) soup that you and your guests will savor. I served my soup with a cucumber salad in a tangy vinaigrette dressing. I’ve also served this as a separate course in a formal dinner menu. Casual or fancy, this is a great soup.
This recipe comes from the cookbook Soup for Syria, a compilation of chef’s recipes to aid refugees. This particular recipe was contributed by Candace Lorfing. Lorfing is identified as half Bosnian and half Lebanese, a mother and an avid cook. This is a repeat recipe for Blue Cayenne. We featured this recipe back in January 2025 when the wildfires were devastating Southern California. Here is the link: Finding Comfort in Food: Cream of Mushroom Soup. This time we added a bit of sherry to intensify the mushroom flavor. Pretty wonderful.
Here is the recipe as I prepared it in my kitchen.
Cream of Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 3 T. butter
- 1 1/2 pound mushrooms (wiped and sliced)
- 1 onion (finely chopped)
- 1 shallot (finely chopped)
- 1 T. flour
- 6 C. vegetable broth
- 1/2 C. cream (plus 1/4 C. for garnish)
- 2 T. chopped parsley
- Juice of 1 lemon
- Salt and freshly-ground black pepper to taste
- 1/4 C. sherry (optional)
Directions
- Step 1 Melt 1/2 the butter in a large pan and saute mushrooms for 5-7 minutes. I used baby bella mushrooms here but look forward to trying this recipe with a combination of other types of mushrooms.
- Step 2 Melt the other half of the butter in a soup pot until hot. Saute the chopped onion and shallot in the hot butter until soft and just beginning to color. You want the onions to be translucent.
- Step 3 Add the 1 T. of flour to the sautéed onion mixture. Stir and cook for about a minute.
- Step 4 Gradually add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer and simmer for about 20 minutes. Stir the mixture occasionally.
- Step 5 Puree the soup to the consistency you want. I enjoyed leaving a bit of texture in my soup.
- Step 6 Clean your soup pot and pour the pureed soup back into the soup pot. Stir in 1/2 to 1 C. of cream. Add lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Add about 1/4 C. sherry (optional).
- Step 7 Garnish bowls of this soup with parsley and additional cream.
