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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!
Creamy Mushroom Soup with Shiitake
Ingredients
- 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
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 2.5 cups water
- 1.5 cups half-and-half (or heavy cream)
- 3 green onions chopped (OPTIONAL)
Instructions
How to make creamy mushroom soup with shiitake
- 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).
Notes
- What can you use instead of half-and-half? You can heavy cream instead. It will work just fine! Or, even better, use half milk and half heavy cream.
Nutrition
Nutrition Disclaimer:
The nutritional information on this website is only an estimate and is provided for convenience and as a courtesy only. The accuracy of the nutritional information for any recipe on this site is not guaranteed. It should not be used as a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
I raise my own shitake mushrooms and this recipe was great with very fresh mushrooms. Since most of my mushrooms are 6" across I used only 3 which was perfect.
You raise your own shiitake mushrooms? I am very jealous. I was lucky this year to eat lots of freshly picked porcini mushrooms (king boletes) - picked right from the woods. They were huge and so good!
Pinned! Pinned! Pinned! Do you think this would work with regular button or baby bellas? Say, if I was too cheap to buy the fancy ones? 🙂
Oh, absolutely! It would work with any "mainstream" mushrooms. 🙂 Regular button or baby bella mushrooms will taste great in this soup - I've made this soup with all kinds of mushrooms. I think there is definitely a difference in flavor depending on what type of mushrooms you're using - but it's all good!
This looks simply delicious 🙂
This recipe looks delicious! How many servings does it make?
Oh mine! This soup makes a huge number of servings 🙂 I think my family plus extended family have been eating this soup for a week, almost every day. 🙂 And, because the soup is thick, the portions are usually on the smaller size, which further increases the number of servings.
Wow! Just made this soup today for lunch, and we loved it. It really is creamy but not heavy, as you say. I used creminis, less water and less cream, since in Mexico our cream is more heavy. I will share my version on my blog soon and hope you like it, of course it will have your credit, too. Congratulations on your site, I love it!
So glad you liked it! That's what I like about that soup - it's not that heavy, it doesn't even use heavy cream, only half-and-half. Creminis would be so good in it!
Thank you for the amazing recipe. I made this for dinner tonight with drop biscuits. It was so yummy. I didn't have Shiitake mushrooms, so I used Portabella and it was so good. I also added garlic. Thank you again.
You're welcome! So glad to hear that! That's truly one of my favorite soups. I bet portabellas were great in it!
It looks delicious, Julia! I love the pics as well. Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!!! xx
Thank you, Denise!
I made this for dinner tonight. My family LOVED it! Great recipe and great photos. Gracias!
Very happy to hear that!
Mmm, nothing beats that umami mushroom flavor!
You made me look up what umami means. 🙂 That means savory taste in Japanese! What a cool word to add to my culinary vocabulary.
I absolutely LOVE Shiitake Mushrooms in soup! Thanks for sharing such a great recipe that's not heavy on the cream. Perfection!
-Shannon
Thank you for your comment! 🙂
Beautiful photos! We had mushroom soup for dinner a few days ago, and now I want to try your version. Looks amazing!
Thank you. 🙂
This sounds so perfect for the cooler weather we have had the last week. I really like that there is no heavy cream and you can never go wrong with mushrooms : )
Pureed mushrooms, vegetable stock plus half-and-half tastes and looks pretty much like you have a ton of heavy cream in this soup.
Flavoursome soup... good winter warmer 😀
Perfect for cold evening!
Very good mushroom soup. I make a lot of soups, all of them from scratch. I mixed Shitakes with wild mushrooms and added potatoes to make the soup thick (I had a lot of chicken broth and not enough mushrooms).
I've never made muchroom soup from scratch because I don't like the idea of putting in so much cream, so I love how the creaminess in this recipe comes from the mushrooms themselves rather than the cream!! Will definitely have to try this out next time I've got mushrooms to make soup 🙂
And I like the flavor of this soup much better, than the soup loaded with heavy cream and just a little bit of mushrooms. I'd rather taste mushrooms, not the cream.
You actually could totally eliminate the cream by using steamed pureed cauliflower instead. You're welcome.
Sincerely,
A Lactose Intolerant Gal
Kimberly, that's a really good idea! Just recently I started using cauliflower instead of cream in alfredo pasta sauce, and I could the same here! Thank you, can't wait to try it! I am sure the flavor will not suffer a bit.
I just stumbled upon this recipe. I need to make this without dairy and I wondered how about the cauliflower substitute - how much steamed cauliflower is the correct amount to use as a replacement for the heavy cream? Many, many thanks!
My rough guess is that you will need any where from 1/4th to 1/5th of the whole cauliflower floret. Here is the recipe for cauliflower alfredo sauce which I made with a single very large cauliflower floret. That recipe produced 5 to 6 cups of the sauce. You might as well just cook the whole cauliflower floret following that recipe (you can use water instead of a little bit of cream), and then measure 1 cup or 1.5 cups to add to this mushroom soup recipe. Use water to thin out the cauliflower sauce or the mushroom soup - I always do.