Condensed Cream of Oyster Mushroom Soup

Remake this pantry staple with foraged mushrooms and quality ingredients for a serious soup upgrade

I created this recipe out of nostalgia for a very peculiar dish my mom used to make for us as kids. 

While we were quite young, my mom would often break out a can of cream of mushroom soup and dump it into a pot. Foregoing milk or water like the can suggested, she would then open up a tin of sardines and add those to the pot of gloop, mixing them in and breaking them up. 

She would toast and butter some Wonder Bread, then serve the gloop in bowls with the toast to dip. All three of us kids would be licking the bowls clean in minutes. 

Sound terrible? Yeah, it does! But the thing was, it tasted REALLY good! Talk about ugly-delicious. 

I hadn’t eaten this unnamed gem of a dish in over 30 years, when suddenly the memory hit me like a nostalgic bag of bricks.

“Damn! I remember that stuff being awesome. I wonder if it was actually good or not?”

Well, the only way to find out was to make it again. I mentally added cream of mushroom soup to my grocery list, then headed out to the woods to bring my dog for a long walk. 

Along the way, I came across a massive flush of fall oyster mushrooms, perched beautifully on the side of a tree just off the trail. Unfortunately, they were about 10 feet off the ground. With the help of a long stick, I awkwardly knocked them off the tree as my dog, Arrow, looked bemused. 

As the oyster mushrooms rained down on my head, I had a Galilean-esque epiphany: why not use oyster mushrooms? I hadn’t bought a can of soup in over 20 years; why buy one now? 

New plan: go home and make my childhood dish, but with better ingredients. 

I did some research into how to make condensed soup at home, then got to work, cleaning and chopping the wild mushrooms. I bought some nice local butter and milk and made a homemade mushroom stock out of the trimmings of the oysters. 

I continued cooking the recipe until the mushroom-spiked liquid was the consistency I was looking for: straight gloop. To that, I added a fancy can of wild sardines that a friend had brought home for me from Portugal, breaking them up into chunks as I stirred them in. 

I toasted some homemade sourdough, spread on the butter, and then dipped a piece of toast right into the pot of condensed soup. 

What a blast from the past!

The flavors and textures brought me right back to our childhood kitchen in the late ’80s, floral wallpaper and all. I felt that it tasted the same, though I knew my fancy additions probably made it quite a bit tastier than if I had gone out and bought the can. 

I texted a picture to my mom, writing, “Hey, look what I made. Recognize this?”

She replied, “Oh my god! I can’t believe you remembered that!”

I ate the next piece of toast over the pot on the stove as well, then put the rest of the concentrate in the freezer to be used later. 

Of course, this oyster mushroom soup concentrate doesn’t need to be used to make my childhood sardine whatchamacallit (though if you do want to try, simply add 1/4 cup milk or water and a can of sardines to 1 cup concentrate. Warm and stir the sardines in, breaking them up. Serve with buttered toast to dip). You can use it to make the more classic cream of mushroom soup by adding milk or water to the concentrate until the consistency you like best is achieved. 

I still recommend serving it with buttered toast, though!