Cream of Soup

So, I was making a casserole - seems like it was a burrito casserole, that required cream of mushroom soup. It was one of those days where I'd been running around all darn day and had spent 2 hours of my day at the grocery. I got home and began cooking to realize that I didn't have two of the ingredients needed for the casserole. Refried beans and cream of mushroom soup. Really? I'd spent all the time at the grocery store and had completely overlooked 2 of the (extremely common) ingredients for supper.

I decided not to give up. I searched to see just exactly how cream of mushroom was made. Could I substitute it? Could I possibly make something that would suffice? I don't cook as much with cream of soups these days, so I thought, just this once I could try and make it.

I had NO idea how delicious and ridiculously EASY Cream of Mushroom Soup is to make. Or cream of anything soup. There are very few ingredients needed, very little cooking time required and it was fantastic. I could've eaten it by itself. And actually, after I'd made it and the homemade refried beans, I decided that they were both WAYYY to good to put in a burrito casserole.

So, enough with the rambling, and on with the recipe. I promise to NEVER use canned cream soup again. It doesn't even come near the taste of homemade, and who knows what they put in there to preserve it and what not.

CREAM OF MUSHROOM SOUP:

3 tablespoons of butter

3 tablespoons of all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon of salt (I used Kosher)

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup of milk *(you can use one cup of either if you don't have both)

1/4 cup chopped mushrooms

(optional - 1 tbsp finely chopped onion- which I didn't use)

Melt the butter in a heavy saucepan. Once the butter is good and blended and bubbly stir in the flour and salt. Use a whisk to stir and prevent lumps. Once it's good and stirred pour in your chicken stock and milk. Cook and stir until it's smooth and thickened. Add your can of chopped mushrooms

**If you'd like to use fresh mushrooms for yours, just saute them with butter before adding flour (and the onions as well if you so chose to use them) and then add them either to your butter to mix with flour, or add them afterward like I did with the canned ones.

Ummm. Then eat it. It is so way better then canned. I wanted to just eat it alone! If you want cream of celery, saute your celery and add. Potato? boil some diced potatoes and mix them in your cream mixture. It's really that easy. And it makes your meal taste SO much better to use homemade instead of canned. Seriously. I made chicken artichoke (another recipe on here) with homemade cream soups and it took that casserole to a totally different level of good!

I hope you enjoy! ;-)