Inspired by Mrs. WheelBarrow’s Mushroom Soup, a winning recipe on Food52.com!

Mushroom Soup
by MrsWheelbarrow, published on Food52.com
For this recipe, I’m simplified and reduced some of the ingredients. The less you have to buy especially for the soup, the better. I’m not a huge mushroom fan, although if you rewind about 25 years you would have met a mushroom black hole. As soon as those button mushrooms were home from IGA, the brown paper bag would be empty. It was a phase. Nowadays mushrooms are not something I pick up with a gallon of milk and dozen eggs – but hubby loves them. So I’m working on using mushrooms a little more often than never to appeal to his palate.
Here are the modified ingredients:
- 8oz mushrooms, any kind you like to eat
- 8oz cremini mushrooms
- 1 good sized shallot
- 1/2 tsp thyme, ground
- 1/2 tsp rosemary, ground
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp butter
- 2 (maybe 2 1/2) cups homemade stock
- 1/4 cup heavy cream
- 2 tbsp fresh chives
You will need two pots: a small one to warm the stock and a pot large enough to hold the soup once you bring it together.
Start warming the stock in the first pot. Clean the mushrooms and remove the stems, chuck the stems into the stock pot as you go. Dice the mushrooms into equal size pieces. Mince the shallot fairly fine.
In the larger pot, assuming you are using two different sizes, normally home cooks have one good set of pots; each a larger or deeper size than the last, warm the butter and oil. Add the shallots first for just a minute along with the thyme and rosemary, liberal pinch of sea salt and some finely ground fresh black pepper. Next, toss the mushroom caps in with the shallots.
As another blogger who recalled the line from Julie & Julia, “Don’t crowd the mushrooms in the pan!” or something close to that will probably say “eeeek! That’s too many mushrooms”. Well, if you’re going to freak out about this, then by all means use a larger sauté pan or brown half at a time. In my kitchen, I don’t have the luxury of time for dinner. There are two little hungry beaks looking for their next worm at all times. Not to mention the mate snooping around the nest. Do what you like, and get those mushrooms looking like this:

See all those golden brown bits of mushroom? Exactly. Now strain the stock which had the stems steeping while all this was going on. The stems or stocks are woody as you will hear about over and again, this just means they are more fibrous and denser than the caps, which are more porous. Pores, unlike the ones on my face now, are a good thing. Why? The pores can absorb liquid, and what would be better than a flavourful liquid like stock. When those mushrooms are ready, slowly add some of the stock to deglaze the pan. Use your wooden spoon to pick up any extra brown bits stuck to the pan, I should have warned you that the shallot will tend to stick before the mushrooms will. I added a little more olive oil to keep everybody lubricated.
Pour the remaining stock into the mushrooms and shallots. Bring this to a gentle simmer while you prepare the final two additions to this soup.

The original recipe calls for the cream to be whipped and dollop into the serving bowls, then topped with chives. To cut a corner here, I just poured the cream into the pot and stirred. Make sure you don’t boil the cream, just incorporate it and kill the heat.
Chives are sneaky. I tried growing chives in the kitchen window. Three, perhaps as many as five shoots appeared after taking care of the seeds for so long. Then they all shriveled up. Two years ago, in the front flower bed, I added chive seeds with the same intent of looking after them. Then, Little Sister came along and I couldn’t bare the heat outside for more than a minute. Amazingly enough, this spring brought life to those little chive seeds. I was thrilled to have fresh chives, oh the possibilities! One day I was making something which I wanted some chives for – only to find the plants weed-whacked down to the ground. MY CHIVES!!! Can’t you just go buy some? That’s not the point I returned. Lucky for us, they grew back twice as full as before and no one is going to weed-whack them.
Enjoy 🙂
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