Corduroy Orange

If the words “Cream of Mushroom Soup” conjure for you images of thick glop from a red can that you mix with milk to make chicken casserole, you haven’t had the real thing.  A freshly made batch of Cream of Mushroom is a delightful experience.

Cream Of Mushroom Soup

yield: about 6 cups of soup

• 12 ounces mushrooms, sliced (feel free to use whatever shrooms or mix of shrooms you like.  I like to mix crimini and button, and if I have them available, I’ll do a few oyster, shiitake, and /or wild harvested mushrooms [in season] if I have them available)
• 1 1/2 sticks of butter (I know, it sounds decadent… but the shrooms need to be browned in batches so as to allow them to saute and not to steam; and the flavor just can’t be replicated using oil.  And, you need a fair amount of fat in order to properly create the roux that is responsible for thickening the soup.  What else can I say?  Just don’t eat it every day.)
• About 1/4 to 1/3 cup of flour (This will be a flexible ratio that you’ll have to use your judgement on.  See the instructions when it comes time to make the roux around the mushrooms, in the main part of the recipe [below])
• 1/2 cup white wine
• About 5 cups of stock (Chicken or vegetable.  This obviously isn’t a vegan soup but it can quite easily be vegetarian.)
• About 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (No, you can’t use milk.  You can get away with light cream if you want),
• Pepper to taste (I used a mix of freshly ground black, white, and green peppercorns.)
• Salt to taste
• 1/3 cup Fresh rosemary, finely minced

In a big soup pot, melt 1/2 stick of butter.  Crack some pepper into it.  Add 1/3 of the mushrooms and salt to taste.  Saute, stirring constantly.  When mushrooms have browned, remove them from the pan with a slotted spoon and let sit to side while you repeat the process twice more.  When the last of the mushrooms have cooked, return all mushrooms to the pan.

Stir flour into the mushrooms until they are well coated and the flour has combined with the butter to the consistency of wet sand.  Don’t add all of the flour at once–add it gradually until it looks right.  Then, stir the mushrooms and flour together until the smell of popcorn wafts from the pan.  This smell is indication that your roux is ready.

Deglaze with the white wine.  Stir it in as it boils and gets absorbed.  When the pan is prtty much dry again, stir in the stock.  Make sure that you get all of the roux incorporated into the liquid–scrape the corners of the pan with your wooden spoon and make certain!  Otherwise non-incorporated roux can scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Let simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Then, stir cream into soup until the soup.  Finish by stirring in the fresh rosemary and turning off the heat.  Serve immediately.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.