For many years I’ve had a philosophy about vegetarian food. I haven’t shared it yet because it really never came up before. After reading through a few good vegetarian cook books, it was time to use it. Uh, my philosophy that is. Good vegetarian meals can be excellent, oustanding even. So, I figure. If you have an oustanding vegetarian dish, add sausage and it’s even better. And that’s where this recipe came from. Welcome to Meathenge’s Vegetarian Mushroom Soup – with Sausage.

Note: Mushroom soup isn’t Gout Safe, meat or no. Mushrooms have approximately 50-150mg per 100grams of purines (components of certain foods that metabolize into uric acid in the body). This is considered to be a Moderate amount of purines, comes to about a limit of 2/3 cup daily. So, be careful out there people! My feet are fine by the way.
Onward. I’m going to start with saying how good this soup was. From the moment I started slicing the mushooms to browning to simmering to eating … oh the smells. Oh the flavors, rich & thick and wonderful. The kind where you lick the back of your spoon just to get every creamy drip off. Mushroom perfection.
Points of interest were using 4 different kinds of mushrooms and the Sweet Spanish Paprika. I wasn’t expecting the smoky flavor to show up so well after all that simmering. And the mushroom flavor LOVED the smoky goodness. A marriage I wasn’t expecting. Oh, and the sour cream really helped too.

Getting the ingredients together was really easy, I had nearly all of it already. The tough part was realizing what 2 pounds of mushrooms look like, it’s a lot. This is why it’s so easy to use 4 or more kinds, you have the room. Let’s start with the ingredients:
1 TBS Butter (butter is not spelled “m a r g a r i n e”)
2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 to 2 lbs mushrooms – Slice the suckers
1/4 pound sausage, nothing with fennel – I used lamb
1 tsp salt – I used a heaping tsp of Kosher
2 to 3 TBS of fresh dill minced
1 TBS Spanish Smoked Paprika
3 tsp fresh lemon juice – show the citrus respect
2 TBS flour – unbleached white
2 cups good stock – you choose what you want, I used chicken
1 cup whole milk – room temperature
Fresh ground black pepper – You choose amount
1/2 cup Creme Fraiche (substitute sour cream if you have to)
Fresh Parsley to garnish
A word about the ingredients & method:
This soup is good enough you could vary the ingredients greatly and still produce something that’ll wiggle your toes. Try to keep somewhat to the recipe the first time, especially the smoked paprika. It’s special. Another point to watch is the Creme Fraiche & Sour Cream situation. The reason I suggest the Fraiche is the simple fact it won’t break on you if your soup is too hot or you simmer it after adding it. Sour Cream will break and spread out it’s fat globules rendering your soup a mess. I had to use Sour Cream this time and it nearly broke, if you look hard you can see creme bits. If you can’t easily find it, make it. Here’s a recipe for making your very own Creme Fraiche.

This should take about an hour, give or take.
Choose a large dutch oven or similar beast.
a) Take the casings off your sausages and render the meat a bit. 3/4 through, add the butter. Add onions and cook over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, salt, dill and paprika. Stir well and cover, let go for about 15 minutes stirring occasionally. Stir in lemon juice.
b) Gradually sprinkle in the flour, stirring all thuh time. Cook & stir another 5 minutes over medium-low. Add broff, put the lid on and simmer for another 10 minutes. Stir it a few times too.

c) Stir in milk, add black pepper and check to see how salty it is. Heat very gently, bring back to temp, CAREFULLY. If you have sour cream, turn OFF the heat and let it rest for 1 minute. If you have the Krem Fresh, add the stuff.
This snapshot makes me cringe, but it’s the best I had. The others were far worse. The food got all my attention and it paid off, sorta.
I made a batch of rice to go with, turned out it worked well over rice. I tried a bowl with hot sauce, worked even better. As leftovers? As expected, even better. It’s good, you go do.
Biggles has left the room.
Xo Xo