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You know those memes about how most recipes in blogs begin with a long drawn out explanation about the origin of the recipes and someone’s entire life story before you finally get to what you really came for?

No? You haven’t seen that yet?

If this is you, don’t worry, friend – I got you:

Keto Cream of Mushroom Soup

Yield: 4 servings (about 1 ½ cups of soup per serving)

Ingredients

Directions

Melt butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until translucent, then add your chopped garlic. Cook until onions and garlic are fragrant. Drop in the mushrooms & spices and sauté until mushrooms are soft and begin to brown. Add the bone broth, scrapping the bottom of the pan to unlock the flavorful frond. While the stock and vegetables start to simmer add the cream cheese and heavy cream to a separate bowl and microwave in 30 second increments, stirring in between, until cream cheese melts and it becomes a smooth, thick liquid. Once melted add the cream cheese & cream mixture to the soup pot. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes on low/medium heat.

Serve hot with a sprinkling of parsley and baked cheese crackers in place of croutons if you desire. The soup can also be used as a delicious sauce over vegetables, chicken, or even low carb pasta.

Optional: Blitz the soup with a hand blender to make for a smoother consistency. I usually don’t do this, as I like mine with larger chunks of mushroom.

Cal: 384g Fat: 37.5g Protein: 4.1g Total Carbs: 7.5g Net Carbs: 6.7g

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Ok, now that we’ve got that out of the way…

I was born on a cold winter’s night in February. The kind of night a soup like this would be perfect for taking the chill off your bones. My mom always used to tell me…

Only kidding.

I love cream of mushroom soup. When I was growing up my mom and I used to eat the Campbell’s canned variety and egg noodles at least once a week. It was our version of ramen noodles or PB & J for those of us that grew up on a budget. There’s just something comforting about foods you remember from childhood. My mom is a great cook, though she won’t admit it. I learned a lot from her and my grandma (Nanny) when it comes to the kitchen.

When we started keto the first time I made everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) with cauliflower.  That’s pretty much a running joke with all of us in the keto community. Craving brownies, pizza, pasta? Cauliflower! I also think it’s one of the reason we fizzled out so quickly…too much of the same. And though we do still have cauliflower occasionally I really wanted to try and branch out this time around so we could stick to it long term.

I mentioned in my first entry that we’ve only been doing keto since August so we’re still kind of just getting started. I’ve been finding most of our dishes through Instagram and Pinterest, but this one was different. This inspiration for this dish came out of two places…

1. I had a bag of frozen mushrooms from Trader Joe’s I had no idea what to do with
2. I was watching “The Chef Show” with Jon Favreau and Roy Choi…honestly I don’t even remember what they were making, but seeing them cooking together – Jon studied with Roy when they made the movie “Chef” and have been friends slash student/teacher since – and seeing Jon absorb everything he could from Roy was super inspiring. I immediately paused the episode and sauntered into the kitchen, determined to make something amazing. 

Keto is all about low carb, high fat which can really make for some incredible meals. There’s another show on Netflix, “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat” by Samin Nosrat that I’ve never actually seen…only the trailer…but the title says it all. Basically, any recipe can go from good to great with the perfect balance of salt, fat, acid, and heat. I try to keep a version of those in my head when I’m cooking. Now I’m a big, giant weenie when it comes to heat…my husband could eat peppers for breakfast and would 100%, if he could get out of bed more than 10 minutes before having to leave. So I tend to only add minimal amounts of heat and let him go H.A.M with the tabasco or whatever his favorite hot sauce is at the moment all the while telling him he’s, “changing the flavor profile!” Which he most definitely is, and I cannot be convinced otherwise.

When I found that bag of mushrooms in the freezer my brain immediately went “Ooh, cream of mushroom soup!” I figured it couldn’t be too hard to make that keto. But how could I make it more than keto…how could I make it EXTRA delicious? Answer: salt & FAT (lots and lots of fat).

I started off melting the butter – a giant chunk of butter. While we eat with our eyes, sure we most definitely eat with our nose, too. The two things I cook with the most and the two things that my husband always comes home saying, “It smells so good in here!” are onions and garlic. So into the butter I threw in a red onion about 5 gloves of garlic. The written recipe says 3 cloves, but honestly for me the more the merrier! I sautéed those for a bit, getting them nice and fragrant before adding in my frozen shrooms.

In the end recipe I replaced the frozen mushrooms with fresh Portobello, but really you could use any mushroom you’d like. Cremini? Yes! Oyster? You betcha. You can add more or less than the 4 suggested cups as well – like garlic I don’t know if you could actually have too many mushrooms. I’m pretty sure that’s impossible.

When it comes to liquid for soups you could use a myriad of things. Water for example…though it may end up a bit bland. Vegetable stock or chicken, fish, beef – whatever floats your boat. I usually have some sort of stock in the pantry, but of course not on this day. I found a lone box of bone broth hiding in the fridge.

I still haven’t made my own bone broth. Remember when everyone was making bone broth a few years ago? It was like that cabbage soup everyone ate in the late 90’s for weight loss. Or that lemon, cayenne, maple cleanse – barf! Unlike filling your stomach with acid and water, bone broth is actually really good for you. It’s full of collagen and minerals and is suuuuper flavorful if done correctly. However, I am far too lazy to boil bones and what not for 8+ hours so I buy mine premade from the grocery store. Again, like the mushrooms and garlic you can add whatever type of broth or stock (or water, ew) to your soup.

There are different types of keto – lazy, dirty, strict, etc. and usually I fall under the lazy category, meaning I don’t really count my calories but I do count my fat macros. While butter may have a decent fat count it alone can’t satisfy all of my macro needs. Besides that cream of mushroom soup isn’t “cream” of mushroom soup without some creaminess! I’ve seen other recipes, like for some Alfredo sauces, calling for cream cheese to add extra…wait for it…creaminess (jeez, can I say cream enough?!). So I thought, why not? In my original version I just added the cream cheese directly into the soup pot  however it never fully melted and left tiny floating chunks of white, which while not bad is just a little off-putting, aesthetically. In the final recipe I melted the heavy cream and cream cheese together so it’s liquid and much easier to combine when you add it to the broth.

Seasoning is so important and I’m a big fan of herbs. Now if thyme isn’t your thing rosemary would definitely work in this soup. Basil may even be a decent contender if you’re feeling a more Italian vibe. Herbs de Provence as well (which I think is a combination of rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and oregano). Thyme is one of my absolute favorite herbs. I LOVE it in soups – butternut squash soup with thyme? OMG, yes please. Same for chicken and dumplings. It adds an extra level of aroma and flavor without giving it that soap smell rosemary can sometimes bring. Garlic salt and onion salt are also bae. I mean I know there are other seasonings, but when in doubt those 3 combined – you really can’t go wrong. I mean you can go wrong, really wrong…so make sure you add a little at a time and taste EVERYTHING in between.

This soup is so creamy, dreamy, earthy, herby, and delicious. It’s also about as rich as Beyoncé, so a little goes a LONG way.

It is perfect on it’s own, but it also makes a delicious pasta sauce over low carb noodles (or the regular kind, too). You can even use it as a gravy over veggies, chicken, pork, etc. I’m even planning on making my green bean casserole with this soup over Thanksgiving and will probably add it as a recipe if it’s a hit!

So there you go – life story, origin story, etc…did you make it to the end? I’ve got no cookies for you here if you did, but you can go make some soup now! Come on, you know you want to.