Vegan Creamy Mushroom Soup

Creamy Mushroom Soup. Staple Autumn and Winter Soup from my childhood. With a few simple ingredients, easy to make. Hearty, earthy but silky mushroom texture, zinged up with some garlic and herbs. It’s a memory
making material soup! 

Creamy Mushroom Soup has been made in my family so many times in the last 40 and some years that I thought that I will have a story a mile long. But then, I did not. Why? I don’t know. It’s one of those things that you don’t put your attention to that much. Something you take for granted. Something that you consider so mundane, even frugal, that you wouldn’t make it for your guests or cook for yourself on your birthday. 

Or, if you are 40 or something-ish, and then you put your head around a thing or two from those years passed and you realize that so many days were just gathered and made from frugal, mundane things like this soup. 

And you start remembering. 

You remember your father and his muddy boots on Saturday after he was working hard in the garden all day long. He stops at the foot of the stairs and calls out my name. Bring me a towel, he asks, and did you start the mushroom soup? Yes, I did, says younger me. I did. My father takes off those muddy boots and comes up the terrace stairs to the kitchen, in his socks.

Mushroom soup was never served in this kind of all dolled up plate with seeds, fresh herbs and crackers. I would never make only two plates worth. I would make a large pot of really thick soup. Truth to be said, it would be made of mostly dried mushrooms, because we didn’t have button mushrooms. Rather ones that my father picked in woods he knows from his childhood. Wearing those same, muddy boots. 

I would never get praised much for this soup either, nor would I have expected it. It was something so everyday and frugal, it was something to whip up on a muddy, cloudy Saturday, and all that you want is to take that mudd off of your feet and wash yourself and warm your insides and outs with a big plate of hot, creamy soup and pieces of stale bread torn in it. 

And you feel the earthy warmth of the soup and silkiness of mushroom pieces that melt in your mout and you feel warm, secure and safe. 

You don’t say much but you feel gratitude towards that someone that made that soup for you, while you were all muddy outside. 

VEGAN CREAMY MUSHROOM SOUP
makes 2 plates

350 g /ca 3 cups when sliced, mushrooms (I had button and some Shitake)
1 small onion, thinly sliced 
few tbsp oil 
2 tbsp flour
salt, pepper
1 clove garlic, finely minced (optional)
2 cups plant milk 

Pour few tbsps of oil and put onion and mushrooms in a heavy bottomed skillet. Or any other pot you fancy, really 😉 and cook on low heat for nice 8 – 10 mins, stirring all the time.  Add a generous pinch of salt and few twists of black pepper. When mushrooms and onions are wilted and a liquid from mushrooms is evaporated in half, move the pot off of the heat. Add flour and stir immediately till all the flour coats the mushrooms nicely. Then add milk and stir some more so there are no lumps. Put the pot back on the low heat, cook and stir for another nice 8 mins or until the soup thickens nicely and the flour is cooked. During that time you can check the seasoning and add garlic if you fancy some. This recipe should be taken only as a guide, really. If you feel the soup is too thick, add a bit more milk. You can make a mushroom pasta sauce too, just add more mushrooms and make it thicker. Mushrooms are not recommended to be reheated so just make as much as you feel you will eat in one go.  Serve immediately with some crackers, toasted bread or a slice of a good sourdough. If you leave it to cool completely, it will thicken more. 

*If you have dried mushrooms, this recipe won’t work. Rather do this: soak 3 – 4 tbsp dried mushrooms in water.  Cook sliced onions with some oil on low heat, stirring all the time. Add flour and stir till the flour coats the onions and gets lightly browned, but really light. Pour the milk gradually over and stirr with a whisk vigorously, so there are no lumps. You can use milk/water solution or just water. Add the seasonings and drained mushrooms and cook for nice 8 -10 mins till the soup gets thickened and flour cooked.