Creamy Mushroom Soup

Creamy mushroom soup in a bowl

Serves 4

Earl is definitely a soup person, he could probably live on soups alone, if I let him.

Do not confuse this recipe for a cream of mushroom soup. This recipe uses chicken broth as its base. Whereas a cream of soup would use milk or cream as its base. This recipe is not as rich as a cream of. However, we think that it has an excellent texture due to the two egg yolks and 35% cream.

This creamy mushroom soup is based on a Julia Child recipe, but as usual Earl and I have modified it to suit our tastes and made it somewhat less complex to make.

It serves 4 as a starter, but Earl and I usually have it as a complete meal. We don't even have crackers or bread with it.

This is one of our favorite soups and we always comment; why don't we make it more often, to which we have no satisfactory answer.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a large pot add the chicken broth, bay leaf and thyme. Bring to a slow boil.
  2. In a soup pot melt 3 tablespoons of butter and add the shallots. Cook on medium low heat for 5 minutes. Do not allow the onions to brown.
  3. Add the flour to the butter and onions, stir to form a roux and cook for 2 minutes. Do not allow the flour to brown.
  4. Remove the flour/onion/butter mixture from the stove and whisk in the chicken broth. Ensure that all of the flour has been dissolved in the broth.
  5. Chop the mushroom stems into large pieces and mix into the soup.
  6. Taste and add salt and pepper as required.
  7. Place the soup pot back on the stove, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
  8. Pour the soup, through a fine wire mesh sieve, lined with cheese cloth, into a clean, large bowl. After pressing as much of the liquid as possible out of the solids discard the remainder.
  9. Thinly slice the mushroom caps.
  10. Rinse the soup pot and heat 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the sliced mushroom caps, lemon juice and 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt. Cook on medium low heat for 5 minutes.
  11. Pour the strained soup into the soup pot and mix well.
  12. Cover and low simmer for 10 minutes.
  13. In a bowl whisk together the egg yolks with the cream.
  14. Temper the mixture by blending in small ladles of soup into the egg/cream mixture. Until this mixture is warm.
  15. Remove the soup pot from the stove and slowly whisk the tempered egg/cream mixture into the soup pot.
  16. Taste and add salt and pepper if required.
  17. Just before serving whisk in the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter.

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