Non-toxic Cream of Mushroom Soup

As I mentioned in a previous post, I don't use the cheap-o cream of mushroom soup you can buy at the store because of its MSG content, an ingredient that I don't feel should be in my family's food and the higher quality cream of mushroom soup is just too expensive for my budget.  This has saddened me for a while, since there are a couple recipes I really like that must have cream of mushroom soup in them.  I finally decided to do something about this and came up with my own cream of mushroom soup recipe.  Added bonus:  this version is a lot more flavorful than the canned gunk, without all the nasty additives!

I took a picture of the mushrooms I used rather than the actual soup, because the soup itself is a gray goo and not very appetizing looking.  It is quite tasty though!

The cost of this recipe really depends on what price you can get the mushrooms at (sales, grow your own, wild foraging?), so I'm not as excited about this version as I'm sure I will be about my Cream of Mushroom Soup 2.0 recipe, since that will be fully explored this fall, pending the discovery of some puffball mushrooms.  If I can find some of those, and if this recipe ends up freezing well (I have some of batch 1.0 in the freezer now to fully explore that), I plan on making a mega batch of it using the puffball mushrooms in the hopes of having a year supply of cream of mushroom soup for almost free!  Other wild foraged mushrooms would probably work as well, but puffball mushrooms are the only one that I can identify well enough to even consider wild foraging for some. 

Cream of Mushroom Soup

1 tbsp butter

2 tbsp diced onions

1 lb mushrooms, cleaned and cut up

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp dried thyme

1 bay leaf

1 tsp sea salt

1/2 tsp ground pepper

2 cups milk (I used whole)

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

1 tsp cornstarch

1 tbsp water

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and saute onions over medium heat.  Put the mushrooms and lemon juice in a food processor and coarsely chop.  Add the mushroom mixture, thyme, and bay leaf to the onions and continue sauteing for another 10-15 minutes, or until the liquid from the mushrooms disappears.  Add the salt, pepper, milk, and chicken stock; bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes.  Combine the cornstarch and water in a separate small cup.  Add the cornstarch mixture and simmer for 10-15 minutes, stirring constantly.  

This recipe creates such a flavorful soup that it probably wouldn't be bad by itself.  To use it in recipes, 1 cup is all you need (maybe even less?) to get the cream of mushroom flavor you are looking for in the recipe.  Add another 1/4 cup of liquid (milk, cream, or water) to make up the difference in the amount of liquid if that matters in the recipe you are using it in.

I'm hoping you'll be able to find this recipe and lots of other great real food recipes in the Fresh Bites Friday linky for today at www.realfoodwholehealth.com.