cream of mushroom soup

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup unsalted butter

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 1/2 pounds mushrooms, thinly sliced

1 onion, diced

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

4 cups vegetable broth

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon dried thyme

2 tablespoons cornstarch

INSTRUCTIONS

If you’re anything like me, you don’t always read the ingredients correctly. For instance, it says to slice the mushrooms, so make sure you do all your prep first. Dice your onion, mince the garlic and slice those mushrooms.  The rest is basically just assembling and dumping items into the pot.

Get butter started in a decent sized stock pot or a Dutch oven. I love my Dutch oven for soups, stews and chowders. It’s cast iron and made by Lodge. Once the butter is melted add the garlic and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms get nice and tender and brown. Season with salt and pepper and then add your onions. Cook for a few minutes until the onions are translucent. I bet your kitchen smells fabulous.

Next you’ll want to add that vegetable broth (or chicken if you prefer), heavy cream and thyme. Assemble your cornstarch slurry (1/4 cup of water and 2 tbsp cornstarch) and then stir that into your soup. Let it thicken, season again with S and P if needed and viola. If your soup is still too thin you can add some more cornstarch, but be careful!

My soup was not as thick as I would have liked. We decided to make some rice and serve the soup over rice. However, next time I would make a roux instead (butter and flour) and use that instead of cornstarch. To make a roux you need to heat a few tablespoons of fat (butter, oil, drippings) in a pan and then whisk in a few tablespoons of flour until the fat is absorbed into the flour (will look paste-y) and then stir and cook for a few minutes. Add some of your soup base to your roux while whisking until your roux is nice and liquidy and then stir into soup and bring to simmer.

That's all she wrote folks! What's your favorite soup? Hit me up in the comments.