This is the result of having looked at a bunch of celery stalks in my fridge and trying to figure out a way to get rid of them without throwing them away — I just don't care much for celery. My plan changed when I noticed that I had a bunch of mushrooms in the fridge that needed to be used yesterday. Also, I wanted to experiment with using my crock pot to cook a roux, and further experiment with using sorghum flour instead of all-purpose. If you like mushrooms but despise cream of mushroom soup, it's probably because you've eaten that awful condensed crap; try this and you'll be pleasantly surprised! (I ended up giving that celery to my neighbor.)
Today's Specimen
Ingredients
- 1 cup sorghum flour (or all-purpose)
- 1 cup butter (salted)
- 4 cups milk (1% or 2%)
- 3 cups vegetable broth
- 3 cups crimini mushrooms, diced
- ¼ cup yellow onion, diced
- 1 tsp garlic, diced
- ½ tsp sage
- ¼ tsp cumin
- 1 bay leaf
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- ¼ tsp salt
Directions
- I cooked my roux in the bottom of a crock pot pre-heated on high. For a stovetop, you'll end up using a small sauce pot over medium-low temperature. Regardless, the same general principle applies to both methods:
- First off, melt all your butter. When using a sauce pot this is how you calibrate your cooking temperature: you don't want the butter to bubble too vigorously, as in boiling, or brown.
- Once that butter's all melted (and not sizzling away like a Martian snowball) add the flour ¼ cup at a time, whisking each batch of flour in thoroughly and letting cook a little before repeating the step. By cooking, I mean the flour-butter mixture should bubble for about 30 seconds to a minute; the objective is to use heat to bind that starch with the fat to form both an emulsifying and thickening agent. A good roux is one that's fussed over like a kingergartner crossing the street in front of school.
- Also bear in mind, while not so easy to discern when using sorghum flour, you're target is a blond — or minimally cooked — roux. Don't walk away from this, not even to pee!
- Now you're going to add the milk in three batches: 1 cup, 1 cup, then 2 cups. I just kept my crock pot on the high setting, but if you're using a stove you'll want to transfer the roux over to a larger pot, and apply medium heat to it:
- Stir in the batch of milk and whisk thoroughly until the milk is thoroughly absorbed into the roux. Now you want it to barely simmer for about a couple minutes per batch, before adding more milk.
- After the last batch of milk is added and whisked in, you'll want to barely simmer the mixture for a good 5 minutes (or in my case covered for 10 minutes). The end product shouldn't appear grainy at all and shouldn't have a coarse mealy consistency or taste like flour when tasted.
- In a food processor with ½ cup of the vegetable broth puree the garlic and onion and add to the roux-milk mixture alongside the rest of the vegetable broth and the spices.
- Let it all come to a slow simmer, then cover and drop the temperature to low and let simmer for 30 minutes, stirring once or twice. (In my crock pot I just keep the temperature on high and the pot covered, and let it go until it came to a boil, stirring twice. I think it took about two hours to come to a full boil.)
- Now add the mushrooms and continue to simmer covered for 30 minutes. (In my crock pot I uncovered it and let it boil with the mushrooms for 30 minutes, then dropped the temperature down to low and covered and let it sit warming for an additional 30 minutes to allow the soup to finish thickening.)
- Transfer the soup into a container and let cool, then sit in the fridge overnight before serving. (I always minimally cook my vegetable ingredients and let the soup, stew, or sauce marinate overnight in the fridge to ripen the flavor: this way the structure and nutritional content of the vegetables remain more intact than if they had been slowly simmering for hours.)
Next Time in the Lab
Frankly, this isn't the sort of dish that lights up my taste buds. But, it did turn out pretty well, though I thought it could use some more mushrooms and a bit more jazz in the spice department (my spices may have been a bit past prime, too).
- Use 4 cups crimini mushrooms instead of 3.
- Substitute ½ tsp celery salt for the ¼ tsp table salt.
- Add ¼ tsp rosemary or thyme.
