Cream of Mushroom Soup

Today I'm going to be showing you how to make this easy and impressive cream of mushroom soup. Hey everyone, I'm Dina from simplyhomecooked.com and today I'm so excited to show you how to make this incredible mushroom soup. It is so warm and comforting and creamy and make sure to stick around to the end of the video because I'm going to show you how to take this soup to a whole other level. Like it is mind-blowing so make sure you watch till the end. Alright enough talk, let's get started. The first thing you want to do is chop up all of your vegetables. So I started off by mincing up two whole garlic cloves. Just use a sharp knife to mince it up as finely as possible and once that's all minced just set it aside. The next thing you want to chop up are some shallots and I used two medium shallots or you want at least a total of about just under a cup. You'll want to dice these up pretty finely as well because nobody likes huge chunks of shallots in their soup and if you cut it up finely they'll cook faster too. Once you're done mincing all the shallots and you're done crying all your onion tears you want to set them aside for later. Alright on to the next vegetable. You want to peel two medium-sized carrots and once they're peeled use a sharp knife to dice them up finely. Keep in mind this is not a chunky soup so you want to make sure all of your vegetables are chopped up to a nice small size. The only thing that shouldn't be diced up finely is the mushrooms because they are the star of the show here. Once you've got all your carrots chopped up just set them aside and we can start working on the mushrooms. So you're going to need a total of 24 ounces of baby bella or cremini mushrooms or honestly you could use whichever kind you have on hand. Now before you slice them up you want to wipe them down with a damp paper towel because when you buy them from the store they're usually covered with a little bit of dirt and you want to make sure to get rid of that before you start cooking. Alright now slice up all of your mushrooms into thin slices. Mine were somewhere between a quarter to an eighth of an inch thick. So once everything is sliced up place it into a bowl and set it aside for later. Place a heavy bottom pot onto your cooktop then bring the heat to medium and add in six tablespoons of unsalted butter. And I use unsalted butter because I like to control the amount of salt I put in my recipes. Once the butter is all melted and bubbly go ahead and add in those minced shallots along with the minced garlic clove and the diced carrots as well. Now grab your wooded spoon and mix everything together thoroughly for a few minutes just until the shallots become translucent. Then add in the 24 ounces of sliced mushrooms and stir that right away and just keep mixing until the mushrooms are cooked through and nice and tender. And this step should take just a few minutes as well. Now go ahead and add half a teaspoon of dried thyme leaves along with a quarter teaspoon of black pepper. Then give that a good stir so all that heat brings the flavor out of those spices. Now add in half a cup plus two tablespoons of all-purpose flour and you want to mix that around so you get rid of that raw flour taste. So by mixing the flour into the fat from the butter you're creating a roux which is going to really thicken up that soup. So in order to activate the roux you got to add some liquids and bring it to a simmer. So you want to add one cup of dry sherry and then bring the heat to high let it come to a nice simmer and simmering the dry sherry is also going to cook out the alcohol. So the next thing you want to do is pour in six cups of chicken broth. Then begin stirring that right away and you want to bring the heat to medium high and let that come to a nice simmer. And to make this soup extra creamy and delicious add in three quarter cups of heavy cream and this is where you can add in the salt and I added a total of two teaspoons of salt but if you prefer it saltier just give it a taste and see if you want more salt go ahead and add more salt. Then stir everything together and then bring the soup to a simmer and just let it simmer for about 10 minutes to really bring out all those delicious flavors. At this point you can go ahead and serve the hot soup with some crusty bread on the side or if you want to go the extra mile go ahead and add the soup into some oven safe soup bowls. Then lightly flour your work surface and place a thawed piece of puff pastry on top. And I just bought mine from the grocery store so you're gonna need a total of half a pound to one pound of puff pastry total. So the amount of puff pastry you'll need really depends on the size of your oven safe soup bowls. So I placed the soup bowl upside down on top of the puff pastry kind of like a guide to see how big of a piece of puff pastry I'll need. So obviously it was a little too small of a piece so I just rolled it out lightly roughly about an inch. It honestly really depends on the size of your soup bowls. So as you're rolling out the puff pastry just keep checking your soup bowl to make sure that there's enough to cover the entire soup bowl along with a little bit extra around the sides because you want to make sure there's about like an inch or maybe even a half an inch over the sides because if you cut just enough for the top the puff pastry will collapse as it bakes and it's not gonna be good. So once you've created a guide with your soup bowls you want to grab some scissors or kitchen shears and cut out those circles. Also make sure that your puff pastry is nice and cold. See mine was a little warm so it was a little bit hard to cut. But no worries you can always just give it a little bit of stretch so you can fit everything perfectly on top of the soup bowls. Now before we pop these in the oven you want to create an egg wash. So just crack one egg into a small bowl along with two teaspoons of water. Then give it a good thorough whisk using a fork. Then grab a pastry brush and generously brush the egg wash over all of the puff pastry. Then you want to preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit and bake it for about 15 to 20 minutes just until the puff pastry is nice and golden brown. And now my favorite part of the recipe is breaking that puff pastry shell. It's warm and crunchy and that texture of the buttery puff pastry is just a match made in heaven when you combine it with that delicious creamy hearty mushroom soup. And there you have it guys. Look how simple this recipe is. I mean it's perfect for a busy weeknight because it comes together so fast. Or you can dress it up with some puff pastry and serve it for like a formal dinner party. Anyway you serve it, it is incredibly delicious. But my honest opinion is the puff pastry. I will definitely recommend. If you can go the extra mile oh you will not regret it. That like crunchy buttery puff pastry combined with that creamy warm soup is just, I can't, I have no words. It's so good. I hope you guys enjoyed watching this video and if you did hit that subscribe button if you're not already subscribed and we'll see you in the next video. Buh-bye!