Warming up Winter with Mushrooms

Discover some of the health benefits of mushrooms & warm up your winter with my simple, tasty soup recipe.

On a cold, wintry day a couple of weeks ago I found myself wandering in the wilds of Woodcroft, one of Adelaide’s outer southern suburbs, searching for a large mushroom farm which, I was told, was unmissable. While I was born with many useful qualities – nice curly hair, the constitution of an ox and a half-way decent brain – an adequate sense of direction was, sadly, not included on the list of things I carry through this life meaning I saw much more of Woodcroft than I had intended. However, after pulling over and speaking firmly to my phone’s maps app I finally found myself at P&L Rogers, a local mushroom growing concern.

Some years ago I was part of a tour of a huge mushroom farm a little closer to home, so I was interested to be able to join another tour to met another local producer. Phil Rogers has been in this business in one form or another for 26 years and bought this farm with his wife, back in 2006. They are now at the helm of an enterprise that produces a massive 35,000 kgs of magnificent mushrooms a week, selling to outlets all over the country.

P&L Rogers Mushroom farm.

After a tour of the facility, we were treated to a marvellous mushroom morning tea while Phil chatted to us about some of the remarkable nutritional facts regarding these interesting little fun guys. There’s no doubt that mushrooms are tasty and full of the delicious umami flavours that we love, but there’s a whole lot of well-researched, scientifically supported health reasons to get more of them into our diets, too.

1.  Did you know that mushrooms don’t photosynthesise like other plants (although technically they are a fungus, not a plant) but, like humans, share the ability to be able to manufacture vitamin D? Vitamin D is essential to our health and is something that we often run short of in the winter months. A tray of mushrooms left out in the sunlight for several hours will actually generate this vitamin within themselves, making it available to us as food. Some producers expose their ‘shrooms to UV light to produce the same result. Just look for the vitamin D labelled mushrooms in your store.

2.  Mushrooms are more nutrient-dense than most vegetables, they are cholesterol free, gluten free and contain virtually no fat. A 100gm serve contains over 20% of the daily requirements for seven essential nutrients.

3.  In comparison with 30 vegetables, mushrooms were placed in the top five for antioxidant capacity. One of these antioxidants, ergothioneine, is essential to protect the haemoglobin in our red blood cells, but cannot be made by our bodies and is only obtained in our diet. It is found in mushrooms, meat, egg yolk, oat bran, wheat germ and some beans and onion. Mushrooms are rich in this and the levels do not diminish during cooking.

Just Mushroom Soup

I made my way home that day (with no unplanned detours this time) full of respect for this healthy and delicious food source and with a great, big bag of them, freshly picked. In a domestic goddess fail, dinner plans for that night were, up until this visit, not much more than a concept. I have recently been given the very gorgeous, very clever and very red, new KitchenAid Cook Processor to play with and, at that stage, was still on my training wheels with it. It immediately became clear that these two things were meant to go together for me and that mushroom soup was the perfect antidote to that cold, wet day.

KitchenAid Cook Processor

I’d never actually made fresh mushroom soup before and this remarkable, but simple to use machine made no work at all of it. The KitchenAid Cook Processor is a joy to use and I’ll be going into more detail as to why I’m in love with it in future posts – watch this space.

As for the name of the soup – that comes from a very skeptical look and question directed at me by my son who wanted to know what was in mushroom soup. “Just mushrooms, more or less” was my reply.

Just Mushroom soup

Amanda McInerney of www.lambsearsandhoney.com

I made this in the new KitchenAid cook Processor, but also include stove-top directions here. You can add cream to this if you feel particularly wicked, but you don't really need to.

5 from 2 votes

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 20 minutes mins

Total Time 30 minutes mins

Servings 4 -6

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

• 1 onion quartered (or finely chopped)
• 1 clove of garlic finely chopped if not using the KA Cook Processor
• 2 Tbs butter
• 750 gms mushrooms sliced
• 2 heaped Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
• 1 litre chicken stock
• Good quality dry sherry

Instructions

 

• KA COOK PROCESSOR INSTRUCTIONS
  
• Place multiblade in bowl, add onion & garlic. Close lid, press pulse for 5 seconds.
• Scrape down, replace blade with Stir Assist tool & add butter, remove the measuring cup.
• Select Boil P2 and start.
• When step 1 is complete add rest of the ingredients, except the sherry. Press Start for Stage 2, reducing the time to 20 minutes.
• When cooking is complete, carefully replace Stir Assist with the multiblade, replace lid and measuring cup. Slowly increase speed to 10 and run for 1-2 minutes.
• Add a big splash of sherry and serve hot with crusty bread.
• STOVE-TOP INSTRUCTIONS
  
• Heat butter in large saucepan over moderate heat, add onion and cook for 5-7 minutes until transparent. add garlic in last minute or two.
• Add mushrooms, stock and thyme, bring to boil then simmer for 15-20 minutes until mushrooms are soft.
• Cool for 20 minutes, then puree soup in a blender or stab mixer until smooth, then reheat.
• Add a big splash of sherry and serve hot with crusty bread.

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

 For lots of other brilliant winter mushroom recipe ideas, check out the Power of Mushrooms website and download their great new Winter Cooking With Mushrooms free ebook.

 Very gorgeous KitchenAid Cook Processor kindly supplied by KitchenAid Australia.