Prepare Mushrooms for Vegetable Beef Soup

"Helen McMahon, here for Expert Village. The next ingredient in our soup will be some nice mushrooms. These are large beautiful mushrooms and for mushrooms it is best not to put them under water. They will just get wet that way but if you will take a damp cloth or in this case, a mushroom brush which is slightly moistened, it will clear off whatever bits of earth that might still be clinging to the mushrooms without wetting them and that will keep them nice and crisp. I am not going to add these directly to the soup. I am going to wait until the last minute but we will have them ready and I will show you what we are going to do with these. Just slice the very end of the cap that way and inspect to be sure you got all the bits of earth off and then just slice them this way. If you think that is too big, you can slice them again but actually I think a nice good slice of mushroom is very attractive in the soup. We are going to take a bit of butter; just about a tablespoon of butter, put it into a small sautéed pan and that will be put on the stove and when the butter starts to turn brown, we will add these and let them sauté for just a minute or two until they have a nice flavored developed. That is a really much more interesting thing to do than just dumping them into the soup at this point because it will have taste and flavor and the consistency of a nicely cooked mushroom."