Foodie Friday: GF Cream of Mushroom Soup

I've been wanting to make this soup for a while now. It's hard to find gluten-free canned soups of any kind, and creamed soups are particularly challenging in this respect. I'm also trying to get away from using as many canned goods, so I was ready to take on this challenge!

Since I like to add soups to baked dishes, I thought it'd be nice to have a stash of cream of mushroom in the freezer for future use. I based my recipe on this one from Get Healthy Cheap. This was my first try at making a blended soup, and I was definitely envying my friends who have fancy blenders by the end.

You will need:

4 Tablespoons butter, cut into pieces
1 ½ pounds assorted mushrooms (I used some dried wild mushrooms I had, as well as crimini, white mushrooms, and a portabella)
Salt and pepper
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
1 bunch of scallions, chopped
Several small potatoes (or one large baking potato), peeled and sliced
3 cups vegetable stock (I used chicken stock instead, because that's what we had in the freezer)
1 ½ cups water
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 ¼ cups milk

• Preheat your oven to 350°F.
• Cut up all the vegetables: The mushrooms should be in medium-sized chunks (I quartered the crimini, sliced the already cut white mushrooms in halves, and cubed the portabella); the onions and scallions can be coarsely chopped; the potatoes need to be peeled, then sliced thinly (for faster cooking).
• Saute the mushrooms, onions, and scallions together in the butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper while you're doing this. The original poster sauteed her vegetables in four steps, but I was able to do it all at once (maybe she has a smaller skillet?). In any case, cook the mushrooms, onions, and scallions down until they're all tender. I can't remember how long this took...so it must not have been very long!
  
• Transfer the cooked mushroom mixture to a soup (stock) pot (I wasn't sure how much soup it would make, so I used my largest pot). Be sure to scrape in all of the delicious mushroom gravy in the bottom of your skillet! Then add the vegetable stock, water, potatoes, and garlic powder.
• Cook on medium-high heat until the potatoes are tender. 
  
• Transfer the soup to your blender and puree. Be careful when blending hot liquids! I found it safer to start off on a low speed and increase, but I was still holding a towel over the blender lid just in case. I had to blend several smaller batches, which is another good way to prevent getting burned. Since I was pouring the soup out of my stock pot and into my blender, I stored the pureed soup in a mixing bowl until I could put it all back in the stock pot. This is what it looked like when I had it all blended:
  
• Transfer your blended soup back into your stock pot and add the milk. Heat through, and you're done! 

Honestly, I think the milk was unnecessary. It didn't change the viscosity or the taste of the soup very much. I think this would be a great vegan soup to make, by using a vegetable-based fat for sauteing and leaving out the milk. Plus, it would've been one less step!

The recipe produced five two-cup servings for my freezer, and a little more than two more cups that I used right away in a baked chicken dish. So, I made the equivalent of 6+ cans of creamed soup in about an hour, and it's cheaper and healthier, too.

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Linked up at Friday Food at Momtrends, Food on Fridays at Ann Kroeker, Friday Favorites at Simply Sweet Home, Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade, Tuesdays at the Table at All the Small Stuff, Slightly Indulgent Tuesday at Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free and Food and Health Carnival at Lisa's Gluten-Free Advice and Healthy Living.