Potato was our ingredient of the season in 2018. We’re fudging it a bit and group sweet potatoes with their distantly related cousins. You can find our full archive of potato(ish) posts here.
I recently made another pot of this soup, and it has held up well to the test of time. The combination of simple ingredient list with a rich finish make this the perfect soup for chilly winter evenings.
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Seeing as how the east coast is shoveling out from another storm, we’re bringing you a delicious, nutritious, and simple sweet potato and mushroom soup.
As we mentioned above, sweet potatoes are not within the same taxonomic family as potatoes. Potatoes are in the nightshade family while sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family. If you’ve ever grown a decorative sweet potato vine that bloomed, you would immediately see the resemblance. But for our purposes, this season we’re grouping all of these tubers together.
This is a simple soup that came about because we had a bunch of mushrooms and a couple of sweet potatoes in the fridge. And with plans to go away for the weekend we challenged ourselves to use what we had rather than go to the store. Necessity is the mother of soup invention!
Sweet Potato & Mushroom Soup
For this soup, I was aiming for a creamy and slightly chunky mushroom soup (not a smooth bisque), with a touch of sweetness from the potatoes. I get the creamy texture by adding a super simple Bechamel sauce. Don’t be intimidated; it’s a great skill to have in your back pocket. And I get the semi-creamy texture by slightly blending the final soup with an immersion blender (a useful tool for any kitchen).
Ingredients
- olive oil
- 1 yellow onion, diced
- 10 oz cremini mushrooms, sliced
- 2 sweet potatoes, peeled and diced into 1/2 inch cubes
- 3 Tbsp butter
- 3 Tbsp flour
- 2 cups whole milk, warmed slightly in the microwave
- vegetable bouillon
- water
- salt
Make the Soup
- Warm about 2 Tbsp of olive oil over medium heat in your soup pot.
- Add the diced onion and allow to sauté until translucent.
- Add the mushrooms and allow them to brown and cook down, stirring every once in a while, but not too frequently.
- Add the sweet potatoes, about three cups of water and vegetable bouillon to taste. Allow to simmer until the potatoes are soft.
- Make the bechamel sauce : melt the butter in a sauce pan. Add the flour and continue to stir the paste, allowing it to cook slightly and bubble, but not to brown (at least not too much). Continue whisking while adding the warm milk, allow it to come to a light simmer, and continue stirring for a few minutes as it thickens.
- Add the bechamel sauce to the soup.
- Using the immersion blender, slightly process the soup. You want it to be somewhat chunky, but without any large bits of mushroom or sweet potato.
This is a nice and hearty vegetarian soup. It pairs perfectly with a fresh salad and warm sourdough. And it’s especially delicious when eaten during a March Nor’easter. xo