This nearly instant cream of mushroom soup mix is put together using easy-to-find ingredients. It’s perfect for quick, weeknight dinners or lightweight camping!
I happen to have two backpacking cookbooks on my shelf! One was written by my mother (anyone else got a feminist nature-loving mother?), and the other was published by the same publisher as Fermenting Made Simple!
However, neither of them had a recipe for cream of mushroom soup… something that I really wanted to for our trip on the Juan de Fuca trail (mostly because I randomly bought a 5 kg bag of dried maitake mushrooms, and I needed a culinary use). So I decided to create the recipe myself!
It’s based on my mother’s Alfredo Rice Divan recipe… without the ham, broccoli, or rice. So a fairly different recipe. 😉
Not just for backpacking!
Since I had such a large bag of dried mushrooms to use up, I ended up making a lot of instant mushroom soup. It’s a really good “instant” meal for all sorts of occasions:
- Camping & Cabining: While I designed this recipe as a lightweight meal for backpacking, it’s also handy for camping or at an off-grid cabin. A lightweight meal is convenient any time refrigeration is difficult or it’s hard to bring in a week’s worth of food.
- Instant lunch or dinner: Sometimes it’s nice to have an instant meal. While I recommend freezing the dried soup mix for long-term storage… it’s pretty easy to heat up and serve when you need it.
- Gifts: Meal trains are great, sometimes… When my sister had her second child she was given a lot of food all at once, which meant she was forced to eat big meals every night just to prevent them from spoiling. Gifting a instant mushroom soup means it will be available whenever they need it!
Store-bought versus DIY dehydration
I created this recipe to use up my huge bag of mushrooms. And the soup does include quite a few packaged foods. If you want to avoid the salt/preservatives/packaging, it’s fine to dehydrate the mushrooms yourself. You can even make homemade cheese sauce mix!
The recipe recommends using a mix of dried mushrooms. Since I already owned a bag of maitake mushrooms, I decided to dry the rest of the mushrooms myself.
Here’s how to dehydrate mushrooms:
- Wash or brush away any dirt. Cut off any bad spots and the woody portion from the stem.
- Slice the mushrooms in half, or in 1/2-inch (1 cm) slices.
- Follow the instructions for your dehydrator, or dry at 90F (30C) for 2 hours, then increase the temperature to 125F (50C) and continue until fully dry. The mushrooms should be crisp and brittle.
Instant Cream Of Mushroom Soup
This nearly instant cream of mushroom soup mix is put together using easy-to-find ingredients. It's perfect for quick, weeknight dinners or lightweight camping!
Ingredients
- 1 package of white cheddar macaroni & cheese
- 1 1/2 cup dehydrated mushrooms (sliced)
- 1/4 cup of ground almonds
- 1 tsp vegetarian bouillon powder
- 1 tsp dried parsley flakes
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 5 cups of water
- 1/2 tsp salt and pepper, to taste
- Optional: 2 Tbsp of butter
Instructions
- Mix the noodles and the cheese powder package, mushrooms, ground almonds, bouillon powder, garlic powder, and parsley flakes in a medium-sized zip-top bag. The bag is now ready for long-term storage or for packing into your backpack. The soup mix is shelf-stable for up to 1 month. Alternatively, freeze it for up to 6 months. (I've gone with conservative estimates here... because I don't want anyone to have their soup mix go bad.)
- When you're ready to make the soup, put 5 cups of water into a pot. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and add the soup mix. Continue to simmer for 5 minutes, until the noodles are fully cooked. Taste and add more salt and pepper, as needed. (The saltiness will depend on your bouillon). Feel free to add 2 Tbsp of butter for richness.
- If you're serving the soup at home, top it with some fresh parsley, chives, or sliced scallions. Store the leftovers in the fridge, and enjoy within 4 days.
Notes
- I used GF mac and cheese, but feel free to use whatever type of mac and cheese you want. I recommend white cheddar because orange mushroom soup is a bit too weird for my family.
- Ground almonds were added to this recipe for protein. If you can't eat nuts, feel free to replace them with an equal amount of instant milk powder.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 2 Serving Size: 1Amount Per Serving: Calories: 373Total Fat: 22gSaturated Fat: 5gTrans Fat: 1gUnsaturated Fat: 15gCholesterol: 17mgSodium: 805mgCarbohydrates: 32gFiber: 5gSugar: 7gProtein: 13g
The sodium is based regular bouillon powder and no additional salt.
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