Creamy mushroom soup with Shiitake – made completely from scratch! So easy and delicious! If you haven’t tried shiitake mushrooms yet in a soup – make this recipe and you’ll love it!

In between the Christmas cookie recipes, I have to fit in this cream of Shiitake mushroom soup I made last week from scratch without using any heavy cream, and using only 1.5 cups of half-and-half. And, by the way, you can use any type of wild mushrooms in place of Shiitake. I’ve made this soup years before, with different types of mushrooms, and it’s always been popular with the family, and I thought it would be nice to make a rendition of it during the holidays this year. Warm and hearty creamy mushroom soup is so welcome on cold winter nights, as a prelude to any dinner. In fact, for the past 2 weeks, a bowl of this wild mushroom soup with shiitake or a carrot-lentil soup always awaits me and my husband as a warming appetizer before dinner. And I wholeheartedly recommend the same for you: fill yourself up with soup before dinner, and you won’t be as hungry and will probably eat less for dinner.

I know many people use store-bought cream of mushroom for gravies, but this is a SOUP! This recipe doesn’t use any heavy cream and uses only 1.5 cups half-and-half, majority of creaminess in the soup comes from pureeing mushrooms, carrots, onions and vegetable stock (which you make yourself by boiling water with vegetables) into a wonderful thick concoction that looks like it’s full of cream. The thick density of pureed mushrooms is easily solved by adding a bit of half-and-half. Or, if you’re a purist and don’t want any cream, you could even get away by substituting half-and-half with lesser amount of milk. Then, right before serving, sprinkle the soup with freshly ground black pepper and salt and enjoy your quiet winter evening warmed by a comforting homemade mushroom soup!

Step-by-step photos: how to make creamy mushroom soup with shiitake

Scroll down for the recipe, but these photos will help you to make this soup.

Start with preparing beautiful Shiitake mushrooms

Slice them up!

Chop up onions and carrots

Cook mushrooms, carrots, onions

Add 2.5 cups water to vegetables

Use food processor to puree vegetables and vegetable stock you just made

pureeing vegetables and vegetable stock in food processor

pureed vegetables and vegetable stock

Put puree back in the pan – see how thick and rich in color it is! Just a little bit of half-and-half will make perfect! No need for heavy cream.

Green onions are optional but I highly recommend using them!

Chop up the green onions!

Soup with added half-and-half. Nice cream of mushroom color!