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This creamy, condensed cream of mushroom soup is easy to make, and it’s perfect to use in soups, casseroles, and lots of other dishes. Just 10 simple ingredients and so much flavor!
Condensed cream of mushroom soup but with clean ingredients and easy to make directions.
This is a great alternative to those canned soup mixes. Over the years, I’ve slowly moved away from all sorts of high preservative boxed foods, canned soups being the first of them.
But when you need to make your favorite green bean casserole at Thanksgiving or a quick version of a chicken tetrazzini in the winter or any other noodle casserole dish, you need a staple like condensed cream of mushroom soup.
Full disclosure, my husband didn’t like the first few versions of this recipe because the excess flour I used made it quite condensed. I cut back the flour, the first time but it was still missing something. So I amped up the seasonings, and now we have something that works great as a springboard for other recipes and it would just as tasty thinned and sipped from a spoon.
My homemade version of condensed cream of mushroom soup also is easy to make, requires just 10 ingredients, most of which are fridge and pantry staples.
Ingredients for condensed cream of mushroom soup
- Salted Butter: use real butter here for the best flavor. Olive oil or other high heat oils will give this more of a canned taste, since we’re opting to make it at home, we want to use real butter to give it a rich and delicious flavor.
- White Onions: finely chop the onions and fry them in the butter to cook out the excess liquid.
- Mushrooms: use a variety here, it is a mushroom recipe after all!
- All-purpose flour: helps thicken the soup to condense it.
- Vegetable Broth or Chicken Stock: You can use mushroom broth to amp up the mushroom flavor. Vegetable broth is great if you’re hoping to keep this vegetarian-friendly. Chicken stock adds more umami to the soup mix.
- Dried Thyme: adds a lemony flavor.
- Garlic Powder: gives this great depth.
- Kosher Salt: use just a pinch since the salted butter and broth/stock are already other sources of sodium in this recipe.
- Black Pepper: just wakes everything up!
Recipe Tips
- The whole point of making condensed cream of mushroom soup at home is for it to have clean ingredients and great flavor, so to really take this recipe to the next level use a medley of mushrooms. I use white button mushrooms, along with cremini mushrooms or baby Bellas, and a couple of shiitake mushrooms.
- If you can’t find fresh shiitake mushrooms in your area, you can rehydrate dried mushrooms and use those.
- You can store homemade condensed cream of mushroom soup in the refrigerator for up to 1 week. For longer storage pop in the freezer for up to 2 months. Just be sure to defrost to room temperature before using in your recipe.
Other homemade sauces and seasonings to enjoy:
- How to Make House Seasoning
- Homemade Cranberry Sauce
- Homemade Gravy Recipe
- Homemade Pizza Sauce
- 2-Minute Caesar Dressing
Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons salted butter or unsalted works too
- ½ cup white onion finely chopped
- 1 ¼ cup mushrooms finely chopped (use a mix of baby Bella, white button, shiitake, etc.) (~8ish ounces)
- 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1 cup vegetable or chicken stock mushroom stock works beautifully too
- ½ cup milk I like whole milk or half and half for occasions
- ⅛ teaspoon dried thyme
- ⅛ teaspoon garlic powder or swap with 2-4 cloves garlic and saute with onions
- 1 pinch salt (~⅛ teaspoon)
- ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
- SAUTE: Melt the butter in a medium sized skillet over medium heat. Once the butter is melted and slightly starts to crackle and brown, add the onions. Stir so they get soft and translucent, but do not brown, about 3-4 minutes.
- ADD: Add in the mushrooms and continue to cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently so that they don’t burn. The mushrooms should reduce in size and start to brown just a little bit.
- ROUX: Sprinkle in the flour, salt, black pepper, thyme, and garlic powder and allow to cook for 2 minutes.
- WHISK: the mixture as you pour the stock and the milk. Bring to a simmer and cook until the soup thickens, about 5-9 minutes.
- STORE: Remove to a glass jar once cooled or use in a recipe as needed.
Notes
- Store this soup mix in an air-tight container in the refrigerator for 1 week or frozen for up to 2 months. To use simply defrost before using in your soup or casserole recipe.
- If you’re turning this into mushroom soup, add salt to preference. The recipe contains less sodium so that when being used in another recipes, you can still season as the recipe calls for! Also, when making a soup, make sure to be generous here and thin with both milk and water for the best flavor!
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Like This? Leave a comment & rating below!
Thank you! I have been looking for a cream of mushroom soup my personal or should I say one of many.lol
Fantastic recipe! Perfect substitute!
I made this soup (it’s delish) and froze it. Now I have thawed it to use in a broccoli casserole. Since this casserole is for Christmas Day, I would like to freeze the prepared, uncooked casserole until then. Is it okay that I would be refreezing the mushroom soup?
I have just made a double batch of this using mainly large field mushrooms with some chestnut mushrooms added. It has made a very tasty pan of dark but super flavoursome thick soup for bagging and batching up for the freezer. The flavour from the dark gilled mushrooms is superb. Looking forward to trying it in the finished dishes in the future. If you ever think of doing a version of this recipe for the condensed celery soup, (which is v hard to find here), do let me know!
can I make this with heavy cream instead of milk ?
Thank you for the recipe! I set out in search of a low sodium recipe for homemade mushroom soup to use in other dishes. My husband recently had a heart attack and is on a sodium restricted diet. When you start reading labels, it is shocking how much sodium Americans eat! I was so happy when I ran across your recipe, and I can cook it in a larger batch and freeze for future
use.
Can Olive Oil be substituted for the butter?
You sure can!
Can’t wait to try this! I posted a comment just before this, but the computer froze and it was lost. I’ll be making a NON-GMO version of this. Thank you so much for sharing!
Not lost Beth! Just hadn’t had a chance to approve your comment 🙂 I hope you enjoy it! I’m totally with you on the non-GMO thing. We’ve almost cut out all products that contain them. *yay*
Hi! As one of “those people” who have decided to avoid GMOs at all costs, I want to thank you for sharing this! I’m going to make this (organic) and I know it will be delicious! I can tell by the ingredients that it will be a keeper! Thanks again for sharing. 🙂
Do you know how to can this?
Unfortunately I don’t, Angela. Not very familiar with canning. Sorry!
I love this! You make a good point that there are so many comfort food, delicious dishes out there using canned condensed soup, BUT how much better are they with your homemade stuff? Awesome! : )
This is such a great idea! I bet it tastes amazing on its own and makes everything you use it in taste 100x better! Pinning!