Hygge recipes to get you through autumn and winter: mushroom soup

The Danish, hygge (pronounced “HUE-gah”) is one of those words that just has no English alternative. Though there are many ways to describe hygge, we see it simply as the Danish ritual of enjoying life’s simple pleasures. Friends. Family. Graciousness.

Autumn is truly here, it’s time for warm jumpers, soft scarfs and comfort food.

I love the Danish attitude to life, and autumn and winter are a time when they really excel at showing us weather whinging Brits what an attitude adjustment we need.

So I thought instead of updating you all with a post about how bare the garden is starting look, I’d share one of our family favourites, a big comforting bowl of mushroom soup.

It’s great to warm you up after a morning of raking leaves and turning compost.

It’s such a simple soup to make and really versatile. So you’ll need…

Ingredients

• 2 punnets of chestnut mushrooms chopped roughly (you can add more if you like make it as thick as you like your soup)
• 1 white onion finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
• 1 tsp of fresh thyme chopped
• 1 litre of stock

Get chopping, chop your onions as finely as you can and sweat them off in your big pot while you chop the mushrooms.

A tip for chopping mushrooms, a lot of folk wash the mushrooms first but I find this just makes them slimey and hard to work with because mushrooms are little sponges that soak up water. Instead use a damp cloth to wipe any rogue bits of dirt from them.

Once your onions have softened add your mushrooms and give it all a really good stir around to help the mushroom start to cook and release their liquor.

Next add your chopped garlic and chopped thyme and give it all a good stir. You only want the garlic in there for a minute of two as you don’t want it to burn.

Add your litre of stock and leave your soup to simmer gently for about 20 mins.

Once you are happy that everything is sufficiently cooked, get out your stick blender and whizz away until it’s nice and smooth.

You can do this in a normal blender, but I had a bad experience with this a few years back which resulted in Kate redecorating the kitchen so I stay with the stick blender.

So that’s your soup. Make it extra nommy and comforting by serving it with a wee swirl of cream on top and a slice of warm cheesy bread.

The cheesy bread recipe is available here.

Mostly, just serve with family and friends and enjoy.