Creamy Mushroom Soup Recipe

Hey guys, it's Dani. Now, in my last video, I did a mushroom 101, and I promised you guys that I would be back today sharing one of my very favorite mushroom recipes. So for this Quick Byte, I'm showing you how to make a clean and delicious creamy mushroom soup. So this recipe was inspired by Mark Bittman. This is his cookbook, one of his many cookbooks, How to Cook Everything, Simple Recipes for Great Food. Now, I find myself reaching for this cookbook over and over and over again, because it's a great resource for healthy home cooks like me and you. So if you guys are interested in learning more about it, I'll leave a link down in the description box below so you can check it out. Now, I'm using two different types of mushrooms here. I have one pound of cultivated mushrooms, and I'm doing a combination of white mushrooms and cremini mushrooms, but you could do all of one or the other. And then I have two ounces of dried shiitake mushrooms. The white and the cremini mushrooms have a nice, mild, earthy flavor to them, and then the shiitake mushrooms have a really deep, rich, woodsy, almost smoky flavor to them. So you can make a really good mushroom soup using just the creminis and the white mushrooms, but if you want a great mushroom soup, in my opinion, you gotta add some wild mushroom into the mix. So the first thing I'm gonna do is reconstitute my shiitake mushrooms. And all that means is I'm gonna get them into a cup or a bowl that's big enough to hold all the mushrooms, and then I'm gonna cover them with some hot water. Let them sit there for 15 to 20 minutes, and then you'll see they're gonna get nice and plump and come back to life. So we'll come back and check those out in a few minutes. In the meantime, I'm gonna get started on the rest of my ingredients. So for these mushrooms, all I'm gonna do is wipe them down with a wet paper towel just to wipe off any excess dirt that might be on there. Now, you could run them under some water if they were really dirty, but in a perfect world, you just wanna wipe them down because they're super absorbent and we don't want them to get soggy. Then I'm gonna trim off the stem and thinly slice them. I'm also gonna be using two tablespoons of olive oil, two tablespoons of finely minced shallots. Now, if you do not have a shallot on hand, don't worry about it. Go ahead and use any onion that you have in the house. Two cloves of minced garlic, a few sliced chives or scallion. And I like to use those to finish off the soup. Three and a half cups of chicken broth and a half a cup of half and half. Now, don't worry, guys. If you don't want to do the dairy, you can leave the dairy out and then just add in an extra half cup of the chicken broth. So I've got all of that set and ready to go. Let's get back to those creminis and then get this soup on the stove. Now, it's been 20 minutes and the shiitakes are ready to go. So I'm just going to drain the excess water out, but I'm gonna save that water because it's full of yummy umami mushroom flavor and I'm gonna add that to the soup as well. And you can see that the mushrooms have plumped up and they've come back to life. So I'm just gonna run my knife through them, give them a quick chop, and we are gonna get this soup on the stove. So I've got a nice big pot on the stove that I'm gonna heat up over a medium heat. And then to that, I'm adding two tablespoons of olive oil. And once the olive oil is hot, I'm gonna get all of my white and cremini mushrooms into the pot. Now, let them go for about 10 minutes or so. I'm gonna stir them occasionally. And what I want is for them to get a nice brown golden color. Now guys, just a side note here. Whenever you are sauteing mushrooms, you never wanna add the salt in right away because the salt pulls all the liquid out of the mushrooms. And then what happens is the mushrooms are gonna end up steaming and we're not gonna get that beautiful golden brown color that we're looking for on our mushrooms. Then once your mushrooms are browned up, just like these here, then you're gonna season it with your salt and pepper. And I'm gonna add to the pan my reconstituted shiitake mushrooms along with the shallot and the garlic. Give that all a stir. And I'm just gonna let this saute for about two minutes or until the shallot and the garlic are really fragrant and the whole kitchen is smelling yum. Once your kitchen smells like you'll wanna eat it, then into the pan, you're gonna add your broth and the reserved mushroom liquid. Remember, that is the water that we saved after we soaked our mushrooms in it. It's got a ton of flavor. Okay, turn your heat up just a bit and let everything come to a boil. Once your soup is boiling, you wanna shut it off and then we're gonna finish it with the half and half. So I'm pouring just a half a cup of half and half into the pan and this is gonna make the soup nice and velvety and creamy. And honestly, if you wanted to go even lighter, you could really get away with just a third of a cup of the half and half. And guys, just a side note here, it's important that you shut the heat off before you add that half and half because if it gets too hot, it's gonna separate on you. So it really is the finishing factor here. We are ready to eat some soup. Mm, mm, mm. I gotta tell you, it's amazing how much flavor you get in such a quick cooking soup. That is delicious. Although I think last time I made this soup, instead of the olive oil, I used butter and true confession here, guys, I think the butter beats the olive oil. So you can take the very same recipe if you want and sub the two tablespoons of olive oil with some good pastured butter and your soup is gonna be even creamier. But either way, you can't go wrong. This is a super simple, lots of umami, lots of flavor, quick cooking mushroom soup and I'll want to hear what you think about it when you give this recipe a try. If you guys wanna print this recipe, make sure to head on over to cleananddelicious.com and when you do try it, take a picture and tag me on Instagram and on Facebook using the hashtag Danny Spees and or cleananddelicious. Thanks so much for watching, guys. I'm Danny Spees and I will see you next time with some more clean and deliciousness. Cheers. Hey guys, it's Danny. Now in my last video, we covered, oop, here we go. Hey guys, it's Danny. Now in my last video, we did a mushroom 101. I did, we didn't, I did that. Here we go. Now I'm using two different types of mushrooms here. So the first thing I'm gonna do is reconstitute my shiitake mushrooms and all you need to do, ready, here we go. So the first thing I'm gonna do is reconstitute my shiitake mushrooms and all you need to do, here we go.