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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 want to make this, but make it Vegan. No animal products. Mushrooms are one of my favorite foods. Not sure whether to use almond, coconut or rice milk to make this creamy. Even hemp milk would do nicely. Dairy is not meant for humans, it is meant for the animal that the mother made it for. Dairy industries are among the cruelest in the world. Go Vegan, have a heart, give a damn.
Made this tonight and we loved it! Except for the 4 year old, who is a mushroom hater. I just wanted to say, for those wondering about servings, my family of 4, which includes my husband and I, a 6 and 4 year old, polished this off easily (with the 4 year old not eating it even). I had 1 bowl and my hubby had 2, with the 6 year old having 1 small bowl a well. Next time I will definitely double it, because it's so good. I just wanted to say that since I saw above a comment that this makes a huge number of servings. Not the case here!
Thank you for the delicious recipe!
I made it almost like you wrote except with a couple edits -
Instead of regular pepper I used Quatre Epices (White pepper, cloves, nutmeg & ginger)
and instead of half and half I used milk which made for a leaner lighter soup. And the french spices added it a festive flare - perfect for a wintery evening.
It came out perfect! I am definitely going to make this again : )
I'm looking forward to trying this recipe. I like mushroom soup on it's own, but it's also a great casserole addition. Have you tried using it as a substitute for cream of.... soups?
Janet, I haven't, but it's not a bad idea, especially when you make a lot of this soup - you could easily side-track and create a completely different soup using a small amount of this one as cream. Let me repeat, not a bad idea. 🙂
Hi I just wanted to let you know that I found your recipe through pinterest and I have made your cream of mushroom soup TWICE in TWO days. It was so good the first time that I made it again to freeze in tupperware for lunches. I made some dairy modifications that I thought your readers may be interested in. I followed the recipe exactly omitting the butter and cream actually. To cook the vegetables I just sprayed the pan with some Pam cooking spray instead of using butter. Once the vegetables are cooking in the water I also added one block of Mori Nu tofu to the pot. Everything else I did the same. It is STILL wonderful!! Still creamy from the blended up mushrooms and tofu. The first batch I used Shiitake and the taste was awesome but because I omitted the dairy at the end the result is very brown (looks funny, tastes great). The second batch I used oyster mushrooms which are very white and then at the end added plain white button mushroom cooked and crumbled for texture to the creamy soup. The second batch is much lighter like a regular cream of mushroom soup. Thank you for the wonderful recipe.
Dawn, thank you so much for such a detailed comment! You've got really good ideas in your comment on how to make this soup dairy free. What an interesting observation you made that lighter color mushrooms, such as oyster mushrooms, will result in a lighter color soup vs. darker mushrooms, such as shiitake. Great tips! 🙂
I made this forever ago, and was just going through my Pinterest for dinner ideas for the week, and figured I should comment, since I always browse the comments when deciding to make a recipe. This was hands down the best soup I have ever had / made. Absolutely delicious!! Thanks for the recipe!
Kelly, thank you! What a sweet comment! I love this soup so much, too!
I count macros, so for anyone interested. For six servings of 1 cup each, here's the breakdown. Per serving: Calories 128; Carbs 7; Fat 9; Protein 3. I did use 1 cup of organic veggie broth in place of 1 cup of the water. Delicious!!
Lori, thank you for this information! It's very helpful. I need to find some sort of plugin to start providing calorie count on my recipes.
Hi, I'm making this soup soon, and because I've never made mushrooms in any form before, I was wondering if it was okay to mix the shiitake mushrooms with regular white mushrooms if I didn't have enough of either? The recipe looks delicious and I would love to make it.
Yes, you can definitely mix shiitake mushrooms with regular white mushrooms. I mix and match mushrooms all the time!
Tried this with potatoes instead of carrots. Now I am bloated.
No half and half for me. Still tasted yummy I finished 4 demitasse cups of this.
Going to try this! Thank you.
Definitely try it! Homemade mushroom soup is one of the best ways to use mushrooms, in my opinion.
Made this for christmas dinner and everyone was impressed! Thanks for the amazing recipe! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by and letting me know you loved the soup! Makes me so happy! 🙂
I know this post is a couple years old but it looks amazing. Great recipes are timeless! Pinned 🙂
I love shrooms!
Averie, thank you so much for visiting! That's an honor to get a compliment from such an accomplished food blogger! 🙂 Thank you!
This recipe looks amazing! If I wanted to use heavy cream instead of half and half, would that mess with the consistency? I was also thinking of replacing the olive oil and salt with truffle flavored olive oil and truffle salt to get that umami mushroom flavor.
Kevin, you can definitely use heavy cream! It would not mess up the consistency except that the soup might be too thick. In that case, just use a little bit of water to make it less dense or you might just like the thicker consistency - I know I do. Oh yes, truffle flavor would be GREAT in this soup! 🙂 I use truffle all the time in cooking - I used to be a big fan of truffle oil, but now we just buy truffle salt - it's much more flavorful! If I used truffle oil, I would add just a splash at the very end on top of the soup as you serve it! Or, in my case, I would sprinkle the truffle salt over the soup when the soup is already in serving bowls.
Do you know how many calories per serving ?
Here is an excellent calorie counter that lots of food bloggers use to add calorie count to their recipes: calorie counter. Create an account, and just copy and paste the ingredient list.