Create an Easy Cream of Mushroom Soup

Fall is finally here and with the weather cooling down, I had a craving for something warm, rich and soul-satisfying. Making a soup can involve a lot of time, particularly one where you need to make a stock or a roux. This is the case with cream of mushroom soup, which usually needs both a vegetable stock and a roux to thicken it.

Thinking there had to be a faster way to make a delicious cream of mushroom soup from scratch, I started thinking about how it could be done. Vegetable or chicken stock is usually used as the main liquid for a cream of _____ soup to impart umami. The problem with this is that because stock isn't very creamy, you then have to finish the soup with a concentrated dairy product like cream or sour cream to give it body and richness as milk would just be too watery.

The thing is, if you properly brown the shallots and mushrooms first, they have plenty of umami without the assistance of stock. Milk also contains a ton of amino acids that impart the taste of umami, so by substituting milk for the stock, it not only reduces the level of effort to make this, it also eliminates the need to add cream.

As for thickening the soup, making roux isn't hard, but it requires another pot and some additional time. I took some inspiration from Pappa al Pomodoro and went with something most people already have in their kitchens to thicken the mushroom soup: stale bread. Aside from being pretty ubiquitous, the browned flour in the crust adds a marvelous nutty flavor to the soup.

Finally, cream of mushroom soup is often pureed, but personally I like having a more chunky soup. That's why I didn't puree this. That said, if you like your mushroom soup smoother, you can put some or all of the soup in the blender to puree it.