Creamy Shiitake Mushroom Soup

Make this creamy shiitake mushroom soup from scratch! This recipe doesn’t use any heavy cream and uses only 1.5 cups half-and-half, majority of creaminess in the soup comes from pureeing mushrooms, carrots, onions and vegetable stock. So good!

Course: Main

Cuisine: American

Diet: Vegetarian

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Servings: 6-8

Ingredients

10 oz Shiitake Mushrooms , large whole

1 tablespoon Olive Oil

1 tablespoon Butter

1 Onion chopped

1 Carrot chopped

1 teaspoon Thyme

1 teaspoon Salt

¼ teaspoon Black Pepper

2.5 cups water

1.5 cups half and half (or heavy cream)

3 spring onions chopped (OPTIONAL)

Instructions

Slice mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large pan, add sliced mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes until mushrooms soften. Remove half of cooked mushrooms to a separate plate.

To the other half of mushrooms, remaining in a large pan, add chopped onion, carrots, thyme, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper to taste. Continue cooking vegetables for 10 more minutes, until onions and carrots soften a bit.

Add 2.5 cups of water to vegetables (mushrooms, carrots, onions) in the pan, bring to boil and boil on medium heat for 20 minutes. Some liquid should visibly evaporate, leaving reduced stock, but don’t let all water evaporate. add more water if that’s the case.

Remove from heat and add the stock you just made (water with mushrooms, carrots, onions) into the food processor. Process the mixture until it achieves puree consistency.

Put puree back into the same cooking pan, add reserved cooked mushrooms that you removed to the plate earlier. Add 1.5 cups of half and half. Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer (low heat) and cook covered for 5 minutes, constantly stirring. Add more salt and pepper if desired. Your soup is done at this point, or you can add chopped onions towards the end or use them as garnish, or skip them altogether (depends if you like green onions in your soup).

Notes

– You can heavy cream instead of half and half.  It will work just fine! Or, even better, use half milk and half heavy cream.

Nutritional Values

Calories 109, Total Fat 8g, Cholesterol 20mg, Carbohydrate 6g, Fibre 1g, Sugar 1g, Protein 2g, 

Recipe by: Julia – www. juliasalbum.com