Cream of Whatever Soup

In my quest to make more and more items of our food from scratch, I kept stumbling across recipes with "Cream of - " soup and would feel compelled to pass them by. Which is sad because a lot of those casseroles, or hot dishes as Craig would say, are quite tasty. Maybe not very colorful or creative, but delicious nevertheless.

But I stumbled upon this recipe substitution a while back and have loved bringing the creamy, comforting casserole into our lives again without letting the bpa, msg or ridiculously high levels of sodium back in with it.

"2 cans of cream of whatever soup"

4 Tablespoons butter (or 2 each of butter and olive oil)
~1/4 cup Mushrooms/Celery (if applicable)
1/4 c flour (whole wheat works great here)
1 tsp. salt or more to taste

Melt butter/oil in small pan. Add flour and salt to make a roux (For cream of mushroom/cream of celery, add about 1/4 cup mushrooms/celery now), whisking until bubbly then about a minute longer. Slowly add 2 cups liquid and continue stirring until thickened. For cream of mushroom/celery, use 2 cups of milk. For cream of chicken, use 1 cup of milk plus 1 cup of chicken broth. I use my homemade stock which is pretty concentrated (I use it diluted 1:1 in water for most other recipes calling for broth). If you use the stuff from a can, you might want to add a bit of chicken base/buillion to bump up the chicken flavor. I've found this to be slightly thinner than the real canned version but it still works great in casseroles. If you want it to be really thick, just reduce the liquid but a tad.