Wild About This Creamy Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup

I thought my favorite soup was Mamma Pagliano's My-Daughter-is-Never-Gonna-Get-Married-Italian Wedding Soup from my book, The Devil Served Tortellini.

But I think I have a new favorite now :-)

I tried this Creamy Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup from the Rachael Ray magazine and totally loved it. I went to several stores to find dried mushrooms (one of these days, a Whole Foods or a Trader Joe's will be built near me...that is my dream...are you reading this, Whole Foods people? Hey, Trader Joe's folks!). Anyway, no dried mushrooms.

So I substituted by frying a few. I had two different sizes of button mushrooms and I took the smaller ones, sliced them and fried them in olive oil until they were caramelized, then added them to the pot in lieu of the dried mushrooms. It worked out just fine :-)

I've had this for dinner twice (tonight was leftover night...I grabbed this container first) and for lunch. Loved it all three times.

Here's the link to the recipe. Since it's Miss Rachael's, I can't copy it here (copyright infringement and all).

Two hints -- DO use homemade chicken stock. It's worth the effort. I usually bake a chicken or two, hold onto the bones and then make stock one day when I'm home all day. If I do two chickens at a time, I can get a good 12 cups of stock out of that. I freeze it in different size containers (marked ;-) for different uses: 1 cup, 2 cup and 6 cup. This recipe uses 6 cups, and that's the last container I had left in my freezer.

Also, DO think ahead and roast an extra chicken when you make chicken sometime. It's easy enough to do two (I just put them side by side on the pan). The one I roasted for this I used in two other dishes. This week, I made a cherry roasted chicken, then the second one. On the extra, basically, I put sage, thyme, a little lemon, and a half an onion inside the chicken. Rubbed the outside with kosher salt and pepper. You can strip the chicken and freeze the bits, or just use them throughout the next few days for different dinners.

If it's still winter where you are, try this soup. It's a great cozy, comfy meal :-)


Shirley