Monday, January 21, 2008

My Favorite Canned Soup from My Childhood

I don’t buy canned soup any more now that I found how easy it is to make soup using my nifty handblender. Plus, canned soup isn’t very healthy because of all the sodium that’s inside to preserve it. I rather be the master of my own sodium.

But because it’s mushroom season (and with our wet weather, we’re probably going to see a bit of wild mushrooms around for a few more weeks), it made me think of my all-time favorite soup when I was growing up: Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom. Sigh, it was so simple and tasty. My mom would let us eat as much as we wanted because it meant she didn’t have to make us lunch. (It’s funny how my mother would let us play with can openers and a hot stove.) I would sometimes mix the soup with some leftover rice to give it more bulk. And, of course, Cream of Mushroom soup is the base for a lot of American comfort dishes. I’m sure a lot of cans were used this past Thanksgiving for those green bean casseroles.

Below is my recipe ala Cream of Mushroom soup. I used a mix of maitake and shiitake mushrooms I got at the farmers market and a whole bunch of crimini mushrooms I got at my Safeway, just to fill everything out. It turned out to be a comforting, earthy soup. (I also found mushroom broth at Whole Foods. I never realized they had mushroom broth, so of course using it in this soup just pushed the depth of this soup over the edge.) Go out and find a mix of fresh mushrooms and leave the canned soup on the shelves! Enjoy!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

where'd u get the hand blender? I need one.

I hope Blue Bottle Cafe opens tomorrow, i told everyone to check it out too on chowhound & yelp.

Single Guy Ben said...

My handblender was actually a gift from my brother two Christmases ago. But it happened to be the same Cuisinart handblender that I had seen at Crate & Barrel. I love it! The satin finish of the metal makes it nice to hold and it really is easy to use to puree a pot of soup. I make almost 90 percent of my soup smooth and pureed. (well, except for Chicken Soup, cause that'll be gross)

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see if Blue Bottle opens on time. It should since they had that sign up. I would think they would take it down if they didn't think they could meet the deadline. It was a pretty small sign, though, so I wonder if people around would even know.

Anonymous said...

I LOVED Campbells Cream of Mushroom soup as a kid. But I hated mushrooms. I would pick them out of pizzas, off salads, I just wouldn't touch them. But I would eat Cream of Mushroom Soup. Thankfully I got over that phase and will eat mushrooms in anything now. Your soup sounds yummy!