What’s the one thing that makes this Mushroom Soup stand out from the rest? You’ll enjoy mushroom flavour in every mouthful. As strange and obvious as that sounds, most mushroom soups are actually nothing more than mushroom bits floating in a generically-flavoured creamy soup broth. But this one is 100% mushroom flavour – down to the last spoonful!
Mushroom Soup
It’s easy enough to sauté up some mushrooms in butter, then add some flour, broth followed by a good glug of cream, and call it a day. And while it will taste just fine, it won’t really taste that much like mushrooms, except for the bites you get with mushroom bits in it.
So in presenting you with a mushroom soup recipe I wanted to make sure it actually tasted like – gasp, shock, horror – mushrooms!
And how do we achieve that? Simple: Blitz the soup! Only this way can we release all the gorgeous, sweet and earthy flavours locked up in the mushrooms into every luscious, creamy mouthful!!
What goes in Mushroom Soup
1. Mushrooms!
Swiss Brown / cremini mushrooms have a stronger mushroom flavour than regular white / button mushrooms but make the soup browner. So I like to use a combination of both Swiss Brown and standard white mushrooms. This gives you the best of both worlds: an intense mushroom flavour with an elegant pale cream colour rather than a (very) brown one!
(Fun fact: White / button, Swiss Brown / cremini and portobello mushrooms are actually all the same mushroom – just in different stages of the mushroom’s life cycle. True story!)
2. Mushroom Soup – other ingredients
One really nice thing about this Mushroom Soup recipe is how few ingredients are actually called for. Why gild the lily with extra unnecessary flavourings when we already have a soup full of beautiful mushroom flavour!
Vegetable stock – Store-bought stock works fine here, but I really recommend trying this with Homemade Vegetable Stock one of these days! Vegetable stock is much easier and less messy to make than meat-based stocks like beef stock and chicken stock, calling for just basic vegetables and flavourings (carrot, celery, onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, coriander seeds);
Cream, or creme fraiche – This adds a luxuriously velvety mouthfeel to the soup so I really recommend not skipping it. If you don’t have either, stir in a knob of butter at the end.
Cream or creme fraiche? Cream is the obvious option, but I’ve also suggested creme fraiche for something a bit different.
What exactly is creme fraiche, anyway? Creme fraiche is a lightly soured cream, and unsurprisingly tastes like a cross between sour cream and heavy/thickened cream. It has the same velvety richness of cream with a slight tanginess (but not as tangy as sour cream). It’s also thicker like sour cream and can be dolloped rather than poured. It lends a lovely faintly sharpened note to the soup.
Which is better? I’d go cream for every day purposes, and reserve creme fraiche for company (yes, it’s more expensive and not carried by all grocery stores). But it’s no lesser a soup with “just” plain cream, I assure you!
Onion and garlic – Essential flavour base; and
Butter – For sautéing.
How to make Mushroom Soup
This soup is very straightforward to make, but there is time involved in sautéing and simmering. This task is essential to bring out all the wonderful flavours!
Sauté onion and garlic in butter for 5 minutes over medium heat until softened, but don’t let them go golden;
Cook mushrooms for 10 minutes until they become soft. They will release quite a lot of water during this stage but the water will evaporate. Don’t try to cook them until golden; they will refuse to because the pot is too crowded and we’re OK with this;
Simmer 15 minutes – Add vegetable stock, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, lower heat to medium and simmer gently for 15 minutes without a lid;
Add cream or creme fraiche and simmer for a further 5 minutes;
Blitz until smooth – Transfer the soup to a blender and blitz until smooth. WARNING! Make sure you remove the lid of the feeder (the hole in the lid of the blender), and cover the hole with a folded tea towel before you blend. Hot soup in a tightly sealed blender on full speed = soup explosion!! The lid will blow off, and you’ll end up with hot soup all over the ceiling – and all over yourself. Been there, done that!
Stick blender option: You could also use a stick blender, but I find that it doesn’t puree the soup as smoothly as pictured. It works fine, but a blender is better; and
Return to pot and simmer further on a low heat for a couple of minutes until bubbles caused by blending subside, then serve! Ladle into bowls and garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil or cream, croutons and parsley or, if you’re feeling a bit Frenchy ‘n fancy, chervil.
I added some golden sautéed slices of mushrooms for the photos, as a cue so you’d know what this bowl of brown liquid actually is. I must confess I’ve never done that in real life before!! 😂
Oh and as I always say when sharing a soup recipe, bread for dunking really is not optional. I say it is in the recipe, but everyone knows I’m lying through my teeth! – Nagi x
PS. I guess I should follow that cheeky statement up with some bread recommendations! 😂 Here are my top 3 picks:
Crusty Artisan Bread – By far the most popular bread recipe I’ve shared, famed for the exceptional results and dead-easy method;
No Yeast Bread Loaf – Loved as an excellent speedy alternative that does not require yeast, along with Irish Soda Bread;
Focaccia – The latest addition to my bread collection, an Italian favourite wildly popular straight out of the gate!
Or choose your own bread recipe!
Watch how to make it
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Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 30g / 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 onion , chopped
- 2 garlic cloves , minced
- 400g / 14 oz white mushrooms (Note 1)
- 200g/ 7 oz Swiss Brown/Cremini mushroom (Note 1)
- 3 1/4 cups vegetable stock (bonus points for homemade veg stock! – Note 2), or chicken stock
- 1/4 tsp salt , cooking/kosher
- 1/8 tsp black pepper
- 3/4 cup crème fraiche or cream (any full-fat) (Note 3)
Garnishes/serving:
- Croutons (Note 4)
- Cream or extra virgin olive oil , for drizzling
- Parsley (roughly chopped), chervil (if you're feeling a bit fancy), or thyme leaves
- Bread for dunking
Instructions
- Chopping mushrooms: Cut mushrooms into 4 slices, then dice into 3 or 4 pieces.
- Saute onion and garlic: Melt butter in a large pot over medium high heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook for 3 minutes until softened, but not golden.
- Cook mushrooms: Add mushrooms and cook for 10 minutes, stirring regularly. Do not try to brown; they won't as the pot is too crowded but we do not need colour.
- Simmer 15 min: Add vegetable stock, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to medium and simmer gently for 15 minutes without a lid.
- Cream: Stir in cream (or crème fraiche), then simmer for another 5 minutes.
- Blitz: Transfer to a blender (do in batches, if necessary). Remove the cap from the feeding hole in the blender lid (Note 5), cover the hole with a folded tea towel. Blend until completely smooth.
- Return to pot, simmer for a minute or two until bubbles caused by blending largely subside and soup is hot.
- Serve: Ladle into bowls. Garnish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil or cream, croutons and parsley or (if you're feeling a bit fancy), chervil. Don't forget bread for dunking!
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
More vegetable soups
Life of Dozer
Builders are here jackhammering up a concrete slab all day today, and I can’t find Dozer’s earplugs. So I sent him off to spend the day with the golden retriever boarder!
Wow…for such a simple soup this was delicious. Easy to make too. My family & ate it with rustic-olive bread for dinner.
Thank you 🧡
What about using an immersion blender? I want to make this again but I’d prefer to shortcut the blending process
Best mushroom soup I have ever made. From now on it will be my go to recipe for mushroom soup. Looking forward to trying some more of your soup recipes. Love your site
I have never liked mushrooms but accidentally received some in a grocery order. I found this recipe and decided to try it out and oh my gosh. It was delicious! I need to start buying mushrooms all the time now!
Nagi,
Watching you dice the mushrooms the hard way prompts me to let you know how I dice mushrooms. I use and egg slicer – Slice them through one way, give a turn to the left or right and slice them through again. Voila! Diced mushroom in 2 steps.
I made rather soup and it’s amazing. Is there any way to thicken it? Thank you for the recipient.
OMG! The best mushroom soups ever!! I made this today. I added a little bit of truffles. It was soooooo good. Thank you so much for your recipe.
So easy and delicious. I have made this in the past exactly as written, but because I’m on a diet I replaced the cream with half and half this time to cut back on the calories a bit. Obviously cream is better, but it still turned out great!
Amazing recipe! But! It makes a huge difference when browning the mushrooms to boil off most (close to all) of the water the mushrooms let out when heated, before adding the stock water. Soo much tastier if you take maybe 10-15mins to boil the mushrooms down BEFORE you add the stock water (I boil down with the stock powder, then add water later).
Tess,
Before frying off the mushrooms, pop them in the microwave for 2-3 minutes on high. This removes a lot of the water in them and when you put them in the pan to fry off it is less likely that they will stew. (This tip courtesy of Adam Liaw, Australian cook).
OMG… this soup was amazing. For hubby and I…. I used a 500gm punnet of white button mushrooms, 2 and half cups of chicken stock…. I used a stick blender…. and my slight variation was about a tablespoon of white wine … and a quarter of teaspoon of dried thyme…… just beautiful ❤
Much easier to make than typically much more elaborate cream of mushroom soup recipes, and yet it is a mushroom soup that really tastes like mushrooms. Will be serving it to our dinner guests with your no-knead bread that should be coming out of the oven as the guests arrive. Thank you for yet another excellent recipe.
ALL of the recipes of yours that I’ve made have been delicious but this mushroom soup takes it over the top. AMAZING! You say it is labor intensive and that is true but the result is like nothing I’ve ever tasted. I followed the recipe exactly, even using creme fraiche and took it to a dinner party tonight. Everyone loved it and went back for seconds and thirds! I was a rock star tonight!
The best mushroom soup recipe!
I used 10%fat greek yog instead of double cream as I didn’t have any. It was really nice and had a little kick to it with the sourness of the yogurt.
Love all the soup recipes. Loved the dogs more. Wish you suggested dog soup!.
This soup is very tasty, and easy to make. We serve it with an open face melted cheese and tomato sandwich. With the fall upon us we will be having it a lot more often.
I have a question. Is it normal to have lots of tiny dark flakes from the gills?
I didn’t personally taste this as I do not like mushrooms but I made it for my partner and he absolutely loved it. I did leave it sitting alone for a moment in the stove though and it bubbles like crazy and spat all over my kitchen, readying as far as the ceiling lol not sure it was really worth it with all the time it took to clean up but I’m glad he was happy haha
OMG!!! BEST Mushroom soup ever!!! I used Swiss brown and portobello and replaced the crème fraiche with sour cream. ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS!!!!!!
Loved this recipe but that is nothing new, l love all your recipes. I have been using them for long time. Thank you ❤
This was really delicious and simple to make. I followed it exactly. On the same day I also made the slow cooked lamb shawarma from this site, mostly for my meat-loving husband. The lamb was nice but took quite a bit more effort, took hours of marinating and cooking time and cost a lot more money…and for me it wasn’t nearly as good as this fairly simple and homely mushroom soup 😂