Simple Mushroom Soup Recipe

Cold autumn and winter evenings demand comforting, feel-good meals that you can make quickly, when you get home feeling chilled. Thick, sustaining soups will warm you right to your toes and are easy to make. Homemade soups taste so much better than tinned soups too. Cream of mushroom soup has the extra comfort factor of its velvety creaminess and tastes great with a hunk of fresh bread slathered with butter or some crunchy, garlicky croutons.

This mushroom soup recipe is made with plain button or field mushrooms, but you can equally well use the fancier sort, or get more depth of flavour by soaking some dried porcini mushrooms and adding them to the rest. As with all soups the taste is improved by using a really good stock. Here the recipe asks for chicken stock, but if you are using porcini mushrooms, the soaking water can be substituted for some of the stock.

Cream of Mushroom Soup Recipe

Ingredients

500g / 1lb mushrooms
90g / 3oz butter
2 medium onions chopped
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain flour
1 litre / 1 ½ pints chicken stock
1 sprig of thyme
1 bay leaf
½ cup cream
salt and pepper

Wipe the mushrooms clean and chop them into rough dice. Chop the onions and crush the garlic. Put the chicken stock to heat in a separate pan.

In a large pan cook the onions, thyme and garlic in the butter over a medium heat, until they are soft and translucent but not browned.

Add the mushrooms, raise the heat and cook, stirring frequently, for about 3 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour over the mushrooms and stir it in so that it coats the mushrooms, then and cook, stirring constantly, for another minute.

Pour the hot chicken stock over the mushrooms and bring back to the boil. Add the bay leaf and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf and thyme and use either a hand held blender or a food processor to process the soup until smooth.

Return the soup to the pan, season with salt and pepper to taste and reheat. When it is simmering stir in the cream. Allow to warm through. Serve with garlic croutons or fresh bread.

Feel like a quick lunch out rather than making your own mushroom soup? Try the delicious lunch menu at Iberico Tapas restaurant in Nottingham.