Hungarian Mushroom Soup: Indulgent Comfort Food for Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammie) Sundays

Hungarian Mushroom Soup might seem a bit more fall or winterish when it's nearly May but it is a soup that I crave since it's perfect comfort food, and my work was giving out near-date foods including 5-lb containers of sour cream. I split one tub with my co-worker, but that still left me with almost 3 pounds of sour cream to go through and I wanted a soup recipe that would utilize at least some of my bounty. Other than the mushrooms which I grabbed at the store with a few other fresh items for the week, I had the rest of the ingredients in my fridge and pantry.

This recipe is modified from the Old Wives Tale Hungarian Mushroom Soup recipe from Food Network. Old Wives Tale was a Portland, Oregon restaurant and this was my favorite dish from there. My roommate and I used to grab it to go. The recipe online is for 12-16 servings-far too much of this rich and decadent soup, so I cut it down by about 1/3--the quantities I used are below, and made a few modifications for optimum flavor. I originally posted this recipe in December 2008, the first year of my blog which turned 12-years-old this month. (I can't believe it's been 12 years!)

Hungarian Mushroom Soup
Slightly Modified from Old Wives Tale, Portland, OR
(Serves 6)

Soup:
2 Tbsp butter
1 large onion, chopped
1 1/2 lb mushrooms (cremini), cleaned well and sliced
3 Tbsp fresh dill (I used freeze-dried)
2 1/2 Tbsp sweet Hungarian paprika 
3 Tbsp soy sauce or tamarin
4 cups water or mushroom broth
roux (see ingredients/recipe below)
1 pint sour cream
2 Tbsp lemon juice, or to taste
sea salt and black pepper

Roux:
4 Tbsp butter
4 Tbsp flour
2 cups whole milk

Melt butter in a large heavy-bottom soup pot. Add the onions, and saute until softened. Add the mushrooms, saute until juice is rendered out. Add the dill and paprika and mix well. Add tamari and water or broth, bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer, cooking for about 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile in a large pan, make the roux by melting the butter and stirring in the flour until it browns slightly. Whisk in the milk gradually, careful to remove any lumps. Cook about 8 minutes. Add in a ladle of the hot soup liquid and continue whisking. Add the water-smoothed roux to kettle and simmer until it thickens, about 10 minutes or until it coats the back of a spoon. Lower the heat (do not boil soup) and whisk in the sour cream until well blended. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy!

Notes/Results: Just as good as I remembered. I love how rich and velvety this soup is but the sour cream, dill and pop of acidity from the lemon juice I added keep it from being too much. It definitely has calories and fat, but it is worth it and although I have made a couple very good vegan and healthy versions, there is something special about this one that makes it worth indulging. I will happily enjoy this for lunches at work and working from home this week.

Let's see who is in the Souper Sundays kitchen this week! 

Shaheen of Allotment2Kitchen shares Orange and Carrot Soup and said, "I am not normally into sweet soups, but I enjoyed as it was not overly candied.  The orange gave the soup a citrus lift.  This was originally a Lemon and Carrot Soup, but I substituted the lemons with oranges."

Debra of Eliot's Eats brought Chickpea Salad and said, "The Chickpea Salad is simple and delicious with raw green beans, tomatoes, red onion, and chickpeas. The dressing is an apple cider vinaigrette with thyme and oregano. I loved it. (Warning though, the recipe yields four very small servings. You might want to double it.) This salad could be very versatile as well. I’m thinking about throwing in edamame and carrots. It’s a tart salad, too, which is fine with me but you might want to throw a little honey into the vinaigrette."

Judee of Gluten Free A-Z Blog made Pandemic Carrot Peanut Soup, saying, "I had 5 pounds (plus) of carrots, so I started looking for carrot recipes. I made a carrot cumin seed recipe last week and was running out of carrot soup ideas. It's been challenging to keep using the same vegetables over and over in my recipes. I find that root vegetables, such as carrots and potatoes, have been keeping the longest in my pantry. ... My friend Yda told me about a recipe for carrot peanut soup. It sounded intriguing, so I thought I would give it a try. However, I had to make up my own recipe, and just use the ingredient's I had in my kitchen. I won't be going grocery shopping for at least 5 more days. I am trying to use up as much as I already have before I venture into a store unnecessarily during this pandemic."

Tina of Squirrel Head Manor shared Beef Vegetable Soup and Homemade Chicken Salad and said, "Today I will share a hodgepodge of soup and sandwiches we have been preparing and eating during the past two weeks. I sometimes miss grabbing a bite out and getting Thai or Indian or Greek...that was before and one day I know we will all get back to business as usual. ... Ok, lunch on the patio: Here we have a beef vegetable soup stocked with so many veggies and fresh baguette."

And... "Homemade chicken salad with lots of tomatoes on toasted potato bread."

Thank you to Shaheen, Debra, Judee, & Tina for joining me this week!

(If you aren't familiar with Souper Sundays, you can read about of the origins of it here.
If you would like to join in Souper (Soup, Salad, and Sammie) Sundays, I would love to have you! Here's how...

To join in this week's Souper Sunday's linkup with your soup, salad or sandwich:

• Link up your soup (stew, chili, soupy curries, etc. are fine), salad, or sandwich dish, (preferably one from the current week or month--but we'll take older posts too) on the picture link below and leave a comment on this post so I am sure not to miss you. Also please see below for what to do on your blog post that you link up to Souper Sundays in order to be included in the weekly round-up.

and 

On your entry post (on your blog):

• Mention Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays at Kahakai Kitchen and add a link back to this post. (Not to be a pain but it's polite and only fair to link back to events you link up at--so if you link a post up here without linking back to this post or my blog on your post, it will be removed.)
• You are welcome to add the Souper Sundays logo to your post and/or blog (completely optional).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Have a happy, healthy week!