Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup
Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup is surprisingly simple to make with just a few basic ingredients. It’s rich, creamy, and comforting on a chilly day.
Sometimes the simplest recipes are the best recipes. This Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup falls into that category. The recipe transforms mushrooms, milk, and cream into a restaurant-worthy dish.
The recipe is adapted from the 1940 edition of the Jessie Marie DeBoth Cookbook. Jessie was a popular early-20th-century cooking instructor and radio personality. She ran the DeBoth Homemakers’ Cooking School, published several cookbooks, and traveled across America teaching women to cook, often thousands at a time.
The flavor of her cream of mushroom soup recipe far surpasses its short ingredient list. It’s rich, creamy, comforting, and has lots of chopped mushrooms. I used a mix of baby bella mushrooms and a small amount of “fancier” mushrooms (oyster, shiitake), but next time I’ll save a few dollars and just stick with baby bella mushrooms—I couldn’t taste the difference.
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Ingredients
The most time consuming part of this recipe is chopping the mushrooms. The soup itself comes together in a flash. I wanted lots of tiny pieces of mushrooms, so I chopped them into pieces no larger than a half-inch. They get even smaller as they cook, so you can get several pieces of mushrooms in a bite of this rich and cozy soup.
How to Make Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup
- Melt the butter in a large skillet or saucepan. Add the mushrooms.
- Cook, stirring occasionally, until the mushrooms are soft.
- Add the flour to the cooked mushrooms, and cook for one minute.
- Whisk in the milk, cream, salt, and pepper. Cook for several minutes until thick. Ladle into bowls and garnish with paprika or fresh chopped parsley.
Tips for Making Cream of Mushroom Soup
- Baby bella or button mushrooms (or a mix) work well for this recipe. You can use other varieties but I found them not worth the price tag for this soup.
- Take care that the soup does not come to a boil or heat too quickly, which can cause the milk to burn on the bottom of the pan.
- If the soup gets too thick, add a splash more milk. It’ll get thicker as it cools and loosen up again when heated.
- I have no shortage of recipes with cream of mushroom soup, so I tried a few using this recipe instead of the usual canned mushroom soup. These crockpot pork chops turned out well using leftover soup from this recipe, as did my Grandma’s easy green bean casserole. I followed the pork chops recipe as directed, using 1¼ cups of leftover soup in place of the can. For the green bean casserole, I used 1¼ cups of leftover soup and omitted the milk from the green bean casserole recipe.
📖 Recipe
Simple Homemade Cream of Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 1 lb fresh mushrooms
- 6 tablespoons butter
- 6 tablespoons flour
- 3 cups milk
- ⅔ cup heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon salt (and more to taste)
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- For garnish: paprika or chopped parsley
Instructions
- Clean mushrooms and finely chop (about ½ inch in size).
- Place butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the mushrooms and cook until soft, about 8–10 minutes.
- Add the flour, mix until the mushroom pieces are coated, and let cook for 1 minutes.
- Whisk in the milk, cream, salt, and pepper. Let cook until thickened, about 5–8 minutes. Take care that the mixture does not come to a boil and do not turn the heat any higher than medium (you don't want burned milk on the bottom of the pan).
- Taste and add additional salt if you’d like.
- Ladle into bowls and garnish with paprika on top. It’ll get a bit thicker as it sits. Add a splash more milk as necessary.
I added some chicken bullion, celery, onion and garlic. Then used an immersion blender to break down some of the mushrooms in the soup at the end. It’s a good base recipe!
Sounds delicious!