simple mushroom soup

For my very first post, I decided to embark upon a winter favorite: mushroom soup. While the obvious choice for a thicker soup would be to add margarine or soy milk, my quest with this recipe was to find a lower fat and calorie option. I got the idea to add a potato from weightwatchers.com (I'm watching my figure, you know), and while this soup is not your traditional creamy mushroom soup, it is quite thick and satisfying.

Ingredients:
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 medium shallots, diced
8 oz cremini mushrooms
4 oz shiitake mushrooms (feel free to mix up type/amount of mushrooms here)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp table salt
freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
4 cups vegetable broth
1 5 oz. peeled potato (I used a russet)

Instructions:
Warm the olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan or pot (large enough to hold four cups broth) over medium heat. When the oil is hot, throw in your shallots and cook for about two minutes or until soft. Be sure to shimmy them around in there so they don't burn.

Add the mushrooms and garlic, and shimmy some more. Cook this mixture for about five minutes until the mushrooms create a nice glaze. [note: I was worried here, becuse the bottom of my pan got pretty dry. However, as long as your heat isn't too high, and you continue to stir the mushrooms, they'll become nice and brown and won't burn. Just stick with it!]



Season the veggies with your thyme, sage, salt, and pepper. You can be flexible with these measurements, season until it looks and smells good to you!

Pour in the broth and bring the soup to a simmer. Make sure to scrape up any deliciousness that has collected on the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon... that's the good stuff. Reduce heat and allow to simmer for about ten minutes.

Meanwhile, grate your potato on the smallest side of the grater. It's important that the potato is grated as thinly as possible, or it won't dissolve into your soup properly. If you're worried, or don't have a small grater, go ahead and throw 'em in the food processor for a few spins till it's nice and thin.

After your ten minutes of simmer-time is up, go ahead and throw in the potato gratings. The soup will thicken instantly-- it's sort of amazing. Keep an eye on it and stir constantly, 'cause it will stick to the bottom of your pot if you're not careful! Keep on simmering until the potato has dissolved. For me, this process took about ten minutes.

Season with some parsley and more salt and pepper if you please! Enjoy this lovely, chunky wintery soup!



Now, the next day, I had a lot of soup left over. So for another spin on things, I put a serving size into my food processor and let it whirl. The result was a smoother soup that had a completely different texture.



Either way you go, this is a nice, light soup that warms the belly in the winter time without knocking off too many points from your daily tally!

Dig in!