Posted on by steve

RECIPE: World’s Best Mushroom Soup

I bought this big package of mushrooms, Baby Bellas, at Costco and forgot to use them. Fortunately — this time — I remembered I had them before they went bad, and, since was a cold day here in San Antonio, I decided to make mushroom soup.

I didn’t want cream of mushroom, though. I wanted something less heavy, but with lots of flavor.

As it turned out, I ended up making the World’s Best Mushroom Soup.

The best thing about this soup, I think, is the subtle smoky corny bacon flavor provided by the roux, so don’t skip the bacon grease or corn flour. If you don’t save bacon grease, fry some bacon up and use that grease, then crumble the bacon over the top of the soup when serving. Or just eat it. Bacon is good.

INGREDIENTS

  • 24oz Baby Bella mushrooms, stems removed, sliced thick or chopped roughly
  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • 32oz chicken broth
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 Tbsp garlic powder
  • 1 Tbsp onion powder
  • 1 tsp black pepper
  • 3 Tbsp bacon grease
  • 3 Tbsp corn flour (masa)

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Peel and nuke the sweet potato for about 3 minutes or so. It doesn’t need to cook through. In fact, you could probably skip this step, but you may want to add a little more time to the simmer to ensure the sweet potato is cooked. Set aside to cool.
  2. Heat up a stovetop crock — I use a Lodge cast iron one — on a medium-high burner, and begin to saute the mushrooms in some of the chicken broth. Add the salt almost immediately and stir the mushrooms. This will help bring the liquid out of them. You can add more chicken broth or water, if necessary, just to make sure the pan doesn’t dry out, but the idea is to shrink the mushrooms a bit and reduce the liquid to intensify the flavor of the broth they are creating.
  3. Once the mushrooms are pretty much reduced, maybe 10 minutes, add the chicken broth, garlic powder, onion powder, and black pepper to the pot. Stir.
  4. Cut the sweet potato into 1/2- to 3/4-inch chunks and add it to the soup.
  5. Bring the soup to a boil. Once it’s boiling, reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for an hour.
  6. While the soup is simmering, add the bacon grease to a small pot, on medium heat. When the grease is liquid, add the corn flour. Stir constantly, until thick, creating a roux. Don’t burn the roux! If it burns, toss it out and start again. This is not a traditional flour and butter roux, so you don’t need to brown it too much, but you should be able to smell a popcorn-y bacon aroma. This should take 5 to 10 minutes. Set the roux, still in the pot, aside.
  7. After the soup has been simmering for an hour, covered, add the roux a  bit at a time, stirring to incorporate each bit before adding more. This will thicken the soup while adding more flavor.
  8. Cover and simmer for another 15 minutes.
  9. Serve immediately.

Makes 2 large or 4 medium servings.

NUTRITION PER LARGE SERVING

  • Calories: 338
  • Fat: 21 g
  • Protein: 7 g
  • Carbs: 31 g (including Fiber: 4.5 g)

This is one tasty soup for a cold day. You may want to serve it with some crusty bread. I don’t, but you may. If you do serve crusty bread, at least slather it with butter to try to balance out the fat-carb ratio.

I suppose you could use a regular potato instead of a sweet potato, but I like the flavor of the sweet potato.

Enjoy!