Here's something that I make and keep on hand at all times. I used to occasionally use Cream of Mushroom (or celery or chicken, etc) soup for recipes but never without wishing I could somehow get that creamy texture without having to resort to canned soup. I try to avoid processed foods, partially hydrogenated fats, soy oils, and other known not to be good for us ingredients. The thing is, some of those recipes that call for cream of something soup are so tasty! And family pleasing! And often easy! So I figured some smart person had come up with an alternative. And they had. And I tweaked it.
Here is my "go to" Cream of Something soup. I make up a multi-batch and keep it in a marguarita mix bucket in the cupboard. You could probably come up with issues about the ingredients but you will have to admit that you know what they are and while they would offend the organic purist, they are far better than the canned alternative.
Cream of Something Soup
1 cup non-fat dried milk
3/4 cup cornstarch
4 Tbsp dried minced onion
1 tsp dried basil (or marjoram if you aren't a big fan of dried basil, like me)
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp pepper
Options:
1 tsp Better Than Boullion chicken (cream of chicken soup)
1 tsp Better Than Boullion beef (creamy pot roast)
1 tsp Better Than Boullion ham (sausage gravy)
1/4 cup dried mushrooms, ground (cream of mushroom soup)
2 Tbsp additional dried onion (yum)
You get the idea...
For the equivalent of one can of condensed soup, use 1/3 cup dry mix and 1 1/4 cup water. Mix well (while the liquid is cool) and cook until thickened.
If it is a crockpot recipe, I sometimes just mix the water and cream of mix in a gravy shaker and pour it into the crockpot and proceed as if I added a can of soup.
I hope you find this helpful. I also appreciate that I don't have all those cans that need recycled AFTER I lug them home from the store.
