Vegan cream of mushroom soup!

I love mushroom soup! I have tried all sorts of ways to make it, using rice to thicken, cornflour too, but always come back to the good old fashioned way of cooking flour with the mushrooms and then adding stock.

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I was prompted to make this again after finding the new plant based Elmlea at Asda today. I haven't tried whipping the double cream yet, will have a play with that at the weekend, but used the single cream in this recipe. If you can't source the Elmlea variety yet, alpro, oatly or supermarket own plant based cream would be fine

This recipe reheats really well so is good to make in advance, and freezes too. This recipe serves 4 people

Ingredients

50g vegan butter, I used Flora

2 medium sized onions, peeled and roughly chopped

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped into little pieces

500g mushrooms, roughly chopped

2tbsps flour

825ml warm vegetable stock

1/4 tsp dried thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

50ml plant based single cream, plus extra for swirling, optional

Fresh chives to garnish, optional

Method

Melt the butter in a large pan, add the onions and garlic and cook gently until softened. This will take 5-10 minutes

Add the mushrooms, increase the heat to medium and continue to cook until the mushrooms have reduced in size and are just starting to brown, not crisp. Remove from the heat and sprinkle over the flour and mix well in

Return to the heat and add the stock and stir well. Add the thyme and bring to a simmer and cook gently for a further 15 minutes, stirring occasionally

With a stick blender or work top unit, blend the soup until smooth. Add the cream and season with salt and pepper to taste

When serving, you can swirl a little extra cream on the top and garnish with chives if you like

Debbie