Roasted Garlic & Creamy Potato Soup with Seared Mushroom
5 ratings · 1hr 0min · 8 servings
A creamy-delicious Béchamel potato soup infused with roasted garlic and earthy seared mushroom
Ingredients:
Produce
• 10 1/2 oz 4 cups (or more) sliced crimini mushroom
• 1 heads Garlic
• 1 Green onion/chives
• 1 Mushroom
• 1 good pinch Thyme, ground
• 1 Thyme, fresh
• 4 cups Vegetable
• 1 Yellow onion, large
Baking & Spices
• 1 Black pepper or paprika, coarse
• 1/4 cup Flour
• 1 Sea salt & coarse black pepper
Dairy
• 1/4 cup Butter, salted
• 1/4 cup Half and half
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 Parmesan or crumbled feta cheese
Other
• 2 pounds (about 4 medium-large) russet potatoes, peeled, roughly chopped and boiled just until fork tender and set aside.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Preheat the oven to 375ºF
With a sharp knife, slice off the top layer of the garlic head/s to expose most of the cloves and peel of as many outer layers of the garlic as possible. You should still be left with a primary layer of skin around the cloves.
Drizzle the exposed cloves with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and coarse pepper. Wrap the garlic head/s in a piece of aluminum foil and place the foiled bundle/s on a baking sheet.
Roast in the oven for 40 minutes or so until the garlic is gorgeously fragrant and, once carefully unwrapped, has taken on a golden color and butter soft texture.
To extract the delicious caramelized garlic from the skin, simply work from the bottom and gently squeeze the garlic through the skin (much like toothpaste) the garlic will ooze out. You must sample (but try not to eat it all!) set the warm roasted garlic aside.
In a large pot or dutch oven, melt butter over low-medium heat. Add the onions and sauté for 5 minutes or so until translucent. Sprinkle the buttered onions with flour* mixing well to integrate and make sure that the flour doesn't brown/burn while it's mixing.
Add the broth (starting with 4 cups), milk, cream, thyme and a few cracks of salt & pepper, whisking to combine. Allow the soup to come to a boil, while continuing to whisk for 10 seconds or so, and then reduce to lowest heat and allow the broth to simmer for another couple minutes as the roux works its magic and the soup begins to thicken somewhat. Turn off heat.
Add the cooked potatoes and roasted garlic cloves intermingling with the béchamel sauce.
Working in batches, carefully transfer ingredients to a blender or food processor and blend until completely smooth. For a more dilute consistency, add a little more broth to desired consistency. Taste the soup and adjust seasonings as desired.
Meanwhile, in a separate pan, sauté mushrooms in a little bit of butter or olive oil until a nice sear develops, adding a few cracks of salt/pepper as desired. Be sure to allow the pan to heat up first and allow the natural water contained in the mushrooms to be released and eventually burnt off through the cooking process. Set the seared mushrooms aside to cool slightly before adding the majority of them to the blended soup (while retaining a few to garnish the top of the soup).
Serve the soup warm and topped as desired with fresh thyme sprigs, green onion/chives, black pepper, seared mushroom and/or cheese.
Storage: This soup will store well in the fridge for up to 5 days. *nb: Dairy soups tend to separate when frozen - this just means that the fat breaks away from the other elements in the mixture and needs to be whisked back into the mixture as it heats to avoid graininess. You can also add a touch more tapioca/cornstarch slurry to help reconstitute the texture if you decide to freeze.
If you are reheating the soup from the fridge you may need to add additional broth to desired consistency as most soups tend to thicken over time.
NOTES:
The Garlic: Roasted garlic is much mellower than raw garlic so don't let the idea of multiple cloves intimidate you. If you choose to work with one head of garlic, I still strongly encourage you to roast at least two (or three) heads because there are so many ways you can enjoy this delicious, caramelized garlic paste (which stores well in the fridge): as a spread on bread/crackers, in dips/hummus, in salad dressings, as a spread in sandwiches or as I did this past weekend, smeared all over our black bean burgers - so delicious!
The Flour*: All purpose flour creates a smooth and delectable Béchamel however I did try tapioca starch/flour (a gluten-free substitute) in one version of this soup - it worked perfectly well in terms of thickening the soup although there was a slight difference in terms of smoothness - a very mild graininess that is not detectable in AP flour. I still found it very palatable but if you go with tapioca flour my suggestion would be to whisk it vigorously to create the smoothest texture possible.
Garnish Options - I enjoy this soup topped with some black pepper or paprika, seared mushrooms and fresh thyme for garnish but my boys also love it with cheese. You can play around with this element to suit your tastes.
The Cream - Half and half is what I generally use as my 'heavy cream' - I find it adaptive and perfectly luxuriously but you can sub heavier cream in this portion of the recipe as preferred.
The Mushrooms - Mushrooms are about 90% water by nature so you want to be careful not to rinse or soak mushrooms to avoid ending up with a soggy mess. Instead, use a brush or cloth with a little bit of water to clean. As for type of mushroom, I went with a common mushroom here but you could sub any variety of choice. Oyster mushrooms, for example, have a delicious resilient, somewhat chewy, texture that is irresistible in soup. Depending on where you live and what you have access to, seasonal varieties might also come into play.
Soup Consistency: This is a creamy béchamel (somewhat thick) soup like potage -- you can thin it by adding more broth, little by little, to desired consistency. If the soup ends up not as thick as you would like, simply add a little tapioca or cornstarch slurry at the very end (in a small bowl, whisk 1 flat tbsp of tapioca flour (or cornstarch) with 1 tbsp of water and then add the slurry to the soup, to thicken somewhat.
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