Mucho Mushroom Soup

Hey, everybody! So I know what you’re thinking right off the bat, “It’s the middle of summer, why on earth would you make cream of mushroom soup?” Well, when life gives you  mushrooms, you make mushroom soup!

And did we get some mushrooms all right! My husband’s co-worker’s husband (say that five times fast) works at a mushroom farm. When he heard this, my husband says, “Oh, I love mushrooms.” So what does his co-worker’s husband do? He brings in a HUGE flat of mushrooms for us. Oh my goodness, look at all these mushrooms:

And that’s not even half of what they brought us! This is just what I used for my mushroom soup! But again, I hear you saying, “There’s so many things you can do with mushrooms. Why cream of mushroom soup in the middle of summer?” Well, again that’s easy: my husband absolutely LOVES cream of mushroom soup. It could be 100 degrees outside (which I think it was the day I made this) and he would still gorge himself on mushroom soup. We actually used to go to this certain restaurant all the time – but only on Mondays – because Mondays were mushroom soup night. My husband didn’t care for much else on their menu, but he loved the soup!

So…of course I had to try making some cream of mushroom soup with all of these mushrooms we had. Now, I did lighten it up a bit for the summertime. This soup is definitely heavy on the mushrooms and light on the cream. During the winter we would probably eat it along with some chicken or some other protein, but for the summertime it was a good meal just on its own – filling, but not so much so that we felt hot or weighted down afterwards.

I made a huge batch, but you can definitely half or quarter this recipe to meet your needs.

Ingredients:

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
• 16 cups mushrooms, sliced or chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 4 cups chicken broth
• 8 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups half and half
• Salt and pepper to taste

Okay, so like I said, this is a LARGE batch. I understand that most people don’t want to go out and buy 16 cups of mushrooms. So feel free to halve or quarter this recipe.

Directions:

First, a note about cleaning your mushrooms. You’ve probably heard that you should never wash mushrooms – you should just wipe them down with a wet towel. Well, I personally don’t think this is always the case. My mushrooms were fresh from the farm, so they needed to be cleaned a little more. You’re not supposed to soak mushrooms in water because they will absorb all the water and make whatever you’re cooking way watery. But I figured because I was making soup with them, it was okay to rinse them off. So feel free to lightly rinse your mushrooms and then wipe them down to remove all the dirt.

Combine onion, garlic, butter, dried thyme, and mushrooms in a large skillet. I used the food processor to save time and chop all the mushrooms, but you can slice them – whatever floats your boat. Just make sure the mushrooms get thoroughly cooked before moving on to the next step. I set the stove top on medium and it took about 10 minutes to cook all the ingredients. You want the onions to be soft and translucent and the mushrooms to be soft.

Next, whisk together the chicken stock and flour and heat to a boil. Don’t heat the chicken stock first because the flour will lump up when you add it in.

Take your cooked mushroom mixture and puree it using a blender. Add the mushroom puree into the chicken stock mixture and simmer. Add salt and pepper to taste, then mix in the half and half prior to serving.

Makes about 12 cups of soup.

Enjoy!