Favourite Potato & Mushroom Soup

This was always my favourite soup as a child and continues to be one of my favourites! It is fast, easy and inexpensive to make.

Print Recipe

Magda's Favourite Potato & Mushroom Soup

Prep Time10 mins

Cook Time40 mins

Servings: 8 persons

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 2 stalks celery, finely diced
• 2 medium carrots, finely diced
• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 3 cloves garlic, finely diced
• 4 large or 6 small potatoes
• 1/2 cup dried mushrooms, broken up
• 1/2 teaspoon marjoram
• 3 cups chicken stock (or vegetable stock)
• 7 cups water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons flour

Instructions

• In a pot on the stove, heat the oil and add the finely chopped vegetables (except the potatoes). I usually do this in large batches and freeze cubes of the cooled vegetable mixture for use in soups, stews, etc.
• Once the vegetables are soft, add the water to the pot.
• Cut potatoes into cubes, add to the water in the pot. Add veggies (if they are frozen into cubes), the marjoram, the salt and the pepper. Bring to a boil.
• Meanwhile, soak broken up mushrooms in 1 cup of hot stock. Add to soup.
• Boil until tender.
• Make a slurry: add the flour to cold water and stir until smooth. Slowly add hot liquid (from the soup) to the slurry to bring the slurry to a similar temperature as the soup. Add this mixture to the soup. If you add the flour (or cornstarch) to hot water, you will get lumps, if you add the cold slurry to the hot soup, you will also get lumps.
• Boil for five minutes.
• Serve now or tomorrow. This, like many soups and stews, is even better when reheated the next day.

Magda’s Frugal Tip

Create a gift box, a place to store gifts for birthdays, Christmas, anniversaries, etc. Throughout the year, pick up items for the gift box as you come across appropriate items, especially if they are on sale and you know they will be liked and will fit (you will probably not be able to return them months from now). This allows you to really shop around for the best deals and to spread your gift purchases over the whole year, making it less exhausting, easier to budget and easier to find bargains as you come across them.