Sausage Stuffed Shrooms

Well, I wasn't sure how I felt about starting on online blog with recipes of my mission to create great food, but my desire to share my passion for food with others won that battle. This blog is for me to share my experiences in the kitchen - the good, and the bad (let's hope to keep the bad to a minimum). My hope is to document each stage of process with pictures so you can see how I went through the recipes in the greatest detail.

My first entry is going to be my experiment with Sausage Stuffed Shrooms. Unfortunately, I only took pictures of the end result in this recipe. Shout out to my buddy Brian who supplied the freshest mushrooms and made this possible.

My inspiration for this recipe came from my mom. This is my adaption of her mushrooms that I grew up loving but never dared to cook for myself. Here is a breakdown of the ingredients I used (any of which can be substituted or excluded based on flavor preferences):

Prep Time: 20 Minutes
Cook Time: 45 Minutes

30 Small-Medium sized Portobello Mushrooms
12 oz Italian Sausage - Sweet (I used sausage links and removed the casings but packaged sausage meat is much easier)
2/3 cup of Seasoned Breadcrumbs
1/3 cup of Grated Parmesan Cheese
1 Small-Medium Spanish Yellow Onion
2 tsp Minced Garlic (approximately 2 cloves)
2 tbsp Parsley
1 tbsp Butter
1/4 cup Olive Oil (Drizzle before Baking)
Salt/Pepper to Taste

Optional:
2 tbsp Butter (cut into thin slices and dropped on baking sheet between mushrooms before baking to increase tenderness)

Now let us breakdown the steps:

1. Washing the mushrooms. The most labor-intensive part of the recipe. Simply use a damp cloth and wipe down the mushrooms thoroughly. Try to avoid washing the mushrooms under running water whenever possible.

2. Remove the stems. The stem should easily break off of the mushroom. Once the stems have been removed, you will dice the stems.

3. Next, dice the onion. You can throw the diced onion into a frying pan and saute with your butter and garlic. The sausage, stems, and parsley will follow very shortly after (I broke up the sausage meat into small pieces and threw in the pan). At this point, simply let the sausage brown while continuing to break down any remaining large pieces of sausage that remain. Continue to cook until the mushroom stems become tender and the sausage has finished browning.

4. After the sausage, onion, and mushroom stems have finished cooking, pour the ingredients into a large bowl. You will now add the parmesan cheese and breadcrumb. Mix together so that the breadcrumb and parmesan are evenly distributed throughout. You can get a bit creative here based on the consistance of stuffing you are looking for but the measurements above seem to work well.

5. This is a good opportunity to preheat your oven to 350F. Well, here comes the fun part. Place the mushroom caps on baking sheet (I sprayed a light coating of Pam spray to prevent sticking). With a small spoon, take spoons of the stuffing and fill the mushroom caps with mounds of stuffing. I found that I had excess stuffing and added even more on my mushrooms after the initial stuffing(as well as storing some for leftovers). After stuffing the mushrooms, this is where you can add the optional butter. Cut the butter into slices and place the slices across the sheet

6. Lastly, drizzle the olive oil across the stuffed mushrooms.

7. You can now bake the mushrooms for 20-25 minutes checking periodically. Mine were closer to 20 minutes but I have an older oven which cooks hotter than most modern ovens so this is where you need to keep a close eye on your mushrooms based on your own oven.

8. Remove from oven and allow a few minutes to cool. After they have had a few minutes to cool down, you can dig in.

And there you have it. If you follow this recipe, you will have some pretty tasty stuffed mushrooms. You will notice that they are heavy on the sausage but who could say no to that? So much of cooking is experimenting and tweaking recipes to taste so don't be afraid to have fun!