Creamy mushroom soup with Shiitake – made completely from scratch! So easy and delicious! If you haven’t tried shiitake mushrooms yet in a soup – make this recipe and you’ll love it!
In between the Christmas cookie recipes, I have to fit in this cream of Shiitake mushroom soup I made last week from scratch without using any heavy cream, and using only 1.5 cups of half-and-half. And, by the way, you can use any type of wild mushrooms in place of Shiitake. I’ve made this soup years before, with different types of mushrooms, and it’s always been popular with the family, and I thought it would be nice to make a rendition of it during the holidays this year. Warm and hearty creamy mushroom soup is so welcome on cold winter nights, as a prelude to any dinner. In fact, for the past 2 weeks, a bowl of this wild mushroom soup with shiitake or a carrot-lentil soup always awaits me and my husband as a warming appetizer before dinner. And I wholeheartedly recommend the same for you: fill yourself up with soup before dinner, and you won’t be as hungry and will probably eat less for dinner.
I know many people use store-bought cream of mushroom for gravies, but this is a SOUP! This recipe doesn’t use any heavy cream and uses only 1.5 cups half-and-half, majority of creaminess in the soup comes from pureeing mushrooms, carrots, onions and vegetable stock (which you make yourself by boiling water with vegetables) into a wonderful thick concoction that looks like it’s full of cream. The thick density of pureed mushrooms is easily solved by adding a bit of half-and-half. Or, if you’re a purist and don’t want any cream, you could even get away by substituting half-and-half with lesser amount of milk. Then, right before serving, sprinkle the soup with freshly ground black pepper and salt and enjoy your quiet winter evening warmed by a comforting homemade mushroom soup!
Step-by-step photos: how to make creamy mushroom soup with shiitake
Scroll down for the recipe, but these photos will help you to make this soup.
Start with preparing beautiful Shiitake mushrooms
Slice them up!
Chop up onions and carrots
Cook mushrooms, carrots, onions
Add 2.5 cups water to vegetables
Use food processor to puree vegetables and vegetable stock you just made
pureeing vegetables and vegetable stock in food processor
pureed vegetables and vegetable stock
Put puree back in the pan – see how thick and rich in color it is! Just a little bit of half-and-half will make perfect! No need for heavy cream.
Green onions are optional but I highly recommend using them!
Chop up the green onions!
Soup with added half-and-half. Nice cream of mushroom color!
Make this creamy shiitake mushroom soup from scratch! This recipe doesn't use any heavy cream and uses only 1.5 cups half-and-half, majority of creaminess in the soup comes from pureeing mushrooms, carrots, onions and vegetable stock. So good!
- 10 oz shiitake mushrooms , large whole
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 carrot chopped
- 1 teaspoon thyme
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
- 2.5 cups water
- 1.5 cups half and half
- 3 green onions chopped (OPTIONAL)
Slice mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and 1 tablespoon butter in a large pan, add sliced mushrooms and cook for about 10 minutes until mushrooms soften. Remove half of cooked mushrooms to a separate plate.
To the other half of mushrooms, remaining in a large pan, add chopped onion, carrots, thyme, 1 teaspoon salt, pepper to taste. Continue cooking vegetables for 10 more minutes, until onions and carrots soften a bit.
Add 2.5 cups of water to vegetables (mushrooms, carrots, onions) in the pan, bring to boil and boil on medium heat for 20 minutes. Some liquid should visibly evaporate, leaving reduced stock, but don’t let all water evaporate. add more water if that’s the case.
Remove from heat and add the stock you just made (water with mushrooms, carrots, onions) into the food processor. Process the mixture until it achieves puree consistency.
Put puree back into the same cooking pan, add reserved cooked mushrooms that you removed to the plate earlier. Add 1.5 cups of half and half. Bring to boil, reduce heat to simmer (low heat) and cook covered for 5 minutes, constantly stirring. Add more salt and pepper if desired. Your soup is done at this point, or you can add chopped onions towards the end or use them as garnish, or skip them altogether (depends if you like green onions in your soup).
Thank you Julia. It came out to be so good. I used heavy whipping cream because that’s all I had at home and couldn’t go out to buy. The quantity was good for 3-4 people though. But we all enjoyed it.
Very delicious! I used broth instead of water and added some garlic and a splash of red wine. Came out great. My biggest comment is that this recipe is NOT 8 main course servings. I got 3 servings.
What can i use instead of half and half?
Oh my, this was wonderful! I left out the salt, added some brown rice miso, Bragg’s aminos and some apple cider vinegar.
Made this soup tonight….used my immersion blender and fresh thyme as well. Initially it was very bland. I ended up adding more mushrooms (doubling the amount) a bit more butter, about two Tablespoons of dried onion as well as a Tablespoon of the Vegetable Better Than Bullion seasoning and a splash of low sodium soy sauce. I also used fresh ground pepper and did not add salt since the bullion and soy sauce covered the salt portion of the recipe. That made it perfect. I omitted the green onions.
So glad you tried this recipe and enjoyed it!
The best soup I have ever made (and I used to own a cafe!).
So glad you enjoyed it!
Good recipe. I made this with maybe 1.5X the amount of mushrooms and used fresh thyme. Used the immersion blender and didn’t love it – it creates too much airiness in the soup for me. Next time I’ll try the stand blender. Soup is packed with shroom flavor.
Glad you enjoyed the recipe! Thank you for sharing your feedback.