Earthy mushroom soup is one of our favorite fall meals. After trying several recipes, we settled on this one as a favorite and we come back to it again and again. It's adapted from a recipe by Anthony Bourdain in his Les Halles Cookbook.
Part of what we like about it is its lack of cream or milk. When we puree this soup it has a rich, velvety creaminess, and a taste from the wine and wild mushrooms that lingers on the palate. When we leave the mushrooms whole it's just as good - deep and earthy.
The key to the flavor is the long sweat for the onions and hour simmer afterwards. Try not to skimp on the time; we usually make this a day ahead so we're not rushed.
Mushroom Soup
about 2 quarts
1/2 ounce dried wild mushrooms, minced
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large white onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
16 ounces white mushrooms, chopped
1 small sprig rosemary (optional)
5 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1-2 teaspoons salt
1-4 teaspoons black pepper
Heat the water and wine to boiling and add the dried wild mushrooms. Let sit for about 20 minutes to half an hour while working with the other ingredients. Cut the onion into a medium dice and gently fry it in the butter over medium heat in a large heavy pot. Add the garlic and let it sweat in the butter for about 8 minutes. Keep the heat low so nothing browns.
Add the white mushrooms and stir until coated with butter and onion. Drain the wild mushrooms, reserving their steeping liquid. Add to the pot and sweat the onions and mushrooms together for another ten minutes.
Add the steeping liquid, rosemary, and chicken stock and bring to a low simmer. Simmer for about an hour. Taste and season with salt and pepper. Remove the rosemary sprig.
You can serve this soup as is, with whole mushrooms, or puree it. It's delicious both ways.
Related: Recipe: Rich No-Cream Wild Mushroom Pasta Sauce
(Image credit: Faith Hopler for Apartment Therapy)
Originally published October 31, 2007
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Comments (8)
He has another similar recipe for a creamy mushroom soup where you puree it and add sherry at the end - it's the best ever! And like he says in the recipe, even better the next day.
MUSHROOM SOUP
This is a ridiculously easy soup to make. It's tasty and durable, and it gets even better overnight.
6 tablespoons butter
1 small yellow onion, thinly sliced
12 ounces white button mushrooms
Can used varied mushrooms too.
4 cups light broth
1 sprig of flat leaf parsley
Salt and pepper to taste
2 ounces high-quality sherry (don't use the cheap grocery-store variety; it's salty and unappetizing and will ruin your soup)
In a medium saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat and add the onion. Cook until the onion is soft and translucent, then add the mushrooms and the remaining butter. Let the mixture sweat for about 8 minutes, taking care that the onion doesn't take on any brown color. Stir in the stock and the parsley, cover, and bring to a boil. Immediately reduce the heat to low and simmer for about an hour.
After an hour, remove the parsley and discard. Let the soup cool for a few minutes, then transfer to the blender and carefully blend at high speed until smooth. Do I have to remind you to do this in stages, with the blender's lid firmly held down, and with the weight of your body keeping that thing from flying off and allowing boiling hot mushroom purée to erupt all over your kitchen?
OR - use an immersion blender right in the soup pot and puree until SMOOTH.
When blended, return the mix to the pot, season with salt and pepper, and bring up to a simmer again. Add the sherry, mix well, and serve immediately.
Makes 4 servings.
My "best ever" mushroom soup is in the original Greens cookbook "Bresse Mushroom Soup"
It is thickened with bread.
The cream is optional, and I always omit it
(I tried it with cream once, and felt no improvement to this already stellar soup)
It gets a depth of flavor from a wild mushroom broth as the base. sooooooo good.
Mushroom soup is one of those no-brainer recipes that I make fairly frequently. I've used a couple of different starting recipes and modified them over the years. You should be warned that if you puree Bourdain's recipe, it will taste wonderful but it can look kind of unappetizing. You can make it without the dried wild mushrooms if you are on a budget - you might want to use baby portabellas as well as the white button mushrooms though. Thyme works well with this recipe.
Portobello mushrooms make an incredibly rich soup.
At the restaurant we use only the stems as the caps are reserved for roasting.
At home, you could make the soup with a combination of stems and caps or reserved the caps for dicing to be used as a garnish in the soup.
Or, you can make the soup with only caps and make a mushroom stock with the stems. For stock simply boil the stems with carrot, celery, onion, bayleaf, peppercorns and then strain.
This soup could be made two ways: light and creamy or dark, rich and creamy.
For a light and creamy soup saute chopped portobellos, chopped carrots, celery and onions and a little garlic in butter.
After the mushrooms and vegetables are medium soft, add some flour and stir it in to create a roux. Then, add the mushroom stock or vegetable stock, let simmer for an hour or so and then puree. Re-season with salt and pepper. The addition of cream is optional. The texture of the soup will be very creamy without the addition of cream.
The rich and dark version of the soup is accomplished by utilizing the same ingredients.
For this version, coat the portobellos with olive oil and roast in a hot oven like a piece of meat. Pre-heat the pan in the oven so when the mushrooms hit it they sizzle.
Saute the carrot, celery and onion until it is nice and caramelized, add the roasted mushrooms, flour and a touch of red wine and tomato paste.
Prepare the soup the same as above but after it is pureed, return to the stove with a sprig of rosemary.
Both soups can be enhanced with the addition of porcini powder. The flour can also be omitted in both recipes. Less broth will of course result in a thicker soup. Other thickening methods such as arrowroot or cornstarch could be used but the more natural, the better.
I think this would be great with some baby spinach leaves added at the very end to wilt and give it a nutritional boost.
Ok, that's it, AT now needs to come up with a way to save these delicious recipes online like on Epicurious or I'm going to go bonkers.
@wildwoodsflower:
Why don't you start an account with one of the online bookmarking tools? I use delicious.com to save all my recipes, from all sorts of different foodblogs and websites. It's so much more convenient than having a separate "recipe box" on each different site.
Saving this one too....and thanks for the bookmarking info. I've been having the same problem.