How onion and bay leaves can rescue your mushroom soup
The mushroom soup begins the holiday feast. Don't forget two simple additions while cooking to avoid starting the Christmas Eve dinner with a bitter aftertaste. You likely have them in your kitchen.
After spending hours gathering and drying, waiting in long lines at the store, and cooking and seasoning, does your mushroom soup still turn out bitter? To prevent an unpleasant surprise, add two simple ingredients to the soup. With these, you can enjoy the pure forest flavor of mushrooms without any bitterness.
Bitter mushroom soup
Simply add onion and bay leaves to the soaking mushrooms. These ingredients effectively neutralize the unpleasant bitter taste, making your dish delicious. It's an old, proven method used by our mothers and grandmothers. Even after many years, it remains reliable.
Pour lukewarm, boiled water over the dried mushrooms. Add a quartered onion with its skins. Toss in 3-4 bay leaves and leave it for several hours. Then, remove the soaked mushrooms, rinse them, and cook in fresh water. The onion and bay leaves will draw out all the bitterness, leaving your mushroom soup or pierogi filling tasting amazing.
How to save mushroom soup?
If you forget these additions and, after tasting the soup, notice a characteristic, not very pleasant bitterness, all is not lost. This may be due to improper cooking, too many mushrooms, or incorrect soaking. Potatoes come to the rescue. Add a few raw, washed, and peeled potatoes to the soup and cook for 10-15 minutes. After this time, remove them from the pot. The potatoes will absorb some bitterness without affecting the taste of the soup.
The bitterness can also be reduced by adding cream or milk. Pour a ladle of the broth and temper the dairy in it. Then, add it to the entire pot and bring it to a boil. Tempering is a very important step to avoid curdling the soup.
