Hungarian Mushroom Soup

This recipe is inspired by a soup of the same name on the menu of The Uptown Cafe in Butte, Montana, where I had a memorable meal with my family in the summer of 2019. Everything was excellent, but one of the reasons we were there was for the Hungarian mushroom soup, which is my dad’s favorite. I suspect the dish made its way to Butte with the Hungarian immigrants in the days of the copper mines, and I came pretty close to duplicating their version. The two key ingredients are mushrooms and paprika; I used both dried and fresh mushrooms, and a top quality, fresh Hungarian paprika. I bought the paprika and dried mushrooms at the Front Street Market in Butte–one of the finest delis and import stores in Montana.

I’ve been interested in Hungarian food since my childhood because of an uncle who fled Hungary during the uprising in 1956. He ended up in Montana, and married my mother’s sister, and brought with him Hungarian cooking, and it has always been one my family’s favorite culinary traditions. I later had several chances to visit Budapest, the first time in 1984, when Hungary was still one of the Warsaw Pact countries, in the waning days of Communist rule. My uncle’s relatives hosted me, and a central part of my time there centered around food.  Almost every dish relied on peppers, which we would buy in the open air market down the street from their high-rise apartment. There were mounds of fresh sweet (édes) and spicy (erős) peppers, and they were used in almost everything, along with lots of powdered paprika. Hungarian cuisine is a refreshing change from the cuisine of neighboring countries, where spices are fairly mild.  (In fact, one of the hottest peppers I ever ate was during one of my visits to Budapest–but that’s another story.) Paprika figured in a dish I had during one of my visits, when we were helping harvest cherries out at my uncle Laci’s summer cottage outside of Budapest. The night before we’d had a wonderful carp dinner, with steaks cut from two fresh carp Laci had purchased at a local market (and initially stored in the bathtub, I think somewhat to the chagrin of Aunt Zsuzsa). We’d brought the bones and innards out to the cottage, and Laci made a rich, paprika infused fish broth, with lots of peppers and onions, slices of carp, and at the very end, he threw in the milt sacks for extra flavor. We cooked the carp stew over a low fire in a copper kettle, or bogrács, and ate it along with cold beers and good bread as the sun set. At the time, I asked one of my cousins how you say “paradise” in Hungarian. The answer was mennyország, which to me sounded a lot like the Hungarian word for Hungary, Magyaroszág. And that evening, Hungary sure felt like paradise. That meal remains one of my favorites, and has remained a treasured memory from my visits to Hungary and my family there, and I’m glad to find another Hungarian recipe to add to my kitchen tradition. 

Ingredients

1 large or two small shallots, finely diced
1 large garlic clove, crushed with flat side of knife (it should remain whole)
1/2 to 1 ounce of dried porcini mushrooms, soaked in 2 cups of hot water overnight)
10 ounces baby portabella mushrooms, sliced
4-5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 quart vegetable or chicken stock
1 tablespoon vegetable or chicken stock concentrate
5 tablespoons flour
7 tablespoons Hungarian paprika
salt and pepper to taste
creme fraiche, Mexican table cream, or sour cream (optional, it really doesn’t need it)

Recipe

In 4 tablespoons of butter, sauté shallots and garlic until translucent and on the edge of browning, and add 4 tablespoons of flour and 6 tablespoons of paprika, and cook while whisking constantly over low heat until flour is cooked, 3-4 minutes.  Add chicken or vegetable stock, and bring to a simmer. Meanwhile, begin sautéing fresh mushrooms in 3 tablespoons of butter. Strain rehydrated porcini mushrooms and chop finely, and filter soaking liquid through a coffee filter, and reserve. Add chopped porcinis to mushrooms, and sauté until fresh mushrooms are brown. Season with salt and pepper and 1 tablespoon of paprika, and cook until flour is browned, 1-2 minutes over medium high heat. Add soaking liquid, and stir mushrooms, scraping pot with whisk, until mixture thickens, another 2 minutes or so. Add mushroom mixture to soup, whisk, and bring soup to low simmer. Add chicken or vegetable stock concentrate, adjust salt and pepper, and add paprika if needed to taste. Serve with a teaspoon of creme fraiche, Mexican table cream, or sour cream. You could also add a 1/2 pint of heavy cream, which would make it much richer, but I like the leaner approach. You can easily omit the butter and use vegetable stock for a vegan version.

Ingredient notes: Any kind of dried mushroom would work in this recipe, and you could also use various kinds of fresh mushrooms–but don’t substitute in for the paprika. It needs to be good quality imported paprika (preferably from Szeged), and it should also be fresh–paprika loses its flavor quickly in storage.