Making do Cooking: Mushrooms. Help!

Cafe Society
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I envy those who can make great meals out of what they have on hand, but I’m not one of them. Here’s things I have, with no plans to go out and buy anything to supplement a recipe. Any ideas? Please keep in mind you’re talking to a cooking idiot here. Generally, if it doesn’t come in a box or a can (or from a fast-food place), it doesn’t get eaten.

I don’t need to use all of this. It’s just what I have.

6 large mushrooms (white kind, 2 1/2 to 3 inches across, bought in a fit of insanity)

1 pound chorizo

1/4 pound ground beef

Mild cheddar cheese

Salt, pepper

Spaghetti and bottled sauce (Ragu)

I also have Parmesean cheese (real, not green can stuff) to grate, and fresh cilantro.

We like to make sketti with a mixture of ground beef and chorizo, with canned mushrooms, and grated cheese on top. That’s just about the highest order of cooking that happens in our kitchen. I bought the fresh mushrooms thinking they would be really good, and because canned mushrooms pretty much suck. But now I don’t know what to do with them.

They look dirty. Do I wash them in water then pat dry? Do I cut them up and saute them in Olive oil, which I do have on hand? How long does it take and how do I know when they’re done? I only know the sick, indescribable color that canned mushrooms have. I’d think that 6 cut-up mushrooms would be a LOT of mushrooms, way too many for sketti for 2 people. I thought, whoo, I love stuffed mushrooms in restaurants, I’ll make some of those.

I looked up a recipe for stuffed mushrooms but it was for 24 mushrooms and I have no idea how to break it down to 4 or 6 mushrooms. That recipe also called for “dry bread crumbs.” It’s embarrassing to ask this, but how do I make dry bread crumbs? Do I take bread (or more likely, since I don’t have any bread currently, hamburger buns) and leave it out to air dry then crumble? It seems like they’d mold up before they dried. Do I put the bread in the oven, then crumble? How long and what temperature?

I know my lazy, worthless-as-a-cook self. If I don’t have something specific to do with these mushrooms, they’ll just sit around until they get thrown away. It’s already been 2 days since I bought them. Help me Save the Mushrooms from the trash, please!

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Mushrooms: Brush the dirt off them with…something. We have a special little brush we use just for this. You could also use a paper towel, or a clean cloth towel, or something like that. I don’t think you want to wash them unless you are going to use them right away, otherwise they will absorb the water and get yucky.

You can certainly slice them and saute them in a tiny amount of olive oil. I would slice up a clove of garlic too, saute that first in the olive oil then add the mushrooms. You will find that they actually shrink as they cook so 6 big ones may not, in fact, be too much for two people. You can also slice them and add them directly to your chorizo/beef/tomato sauce mixture and cook them that way. The flavor of canned mushrooms can not begin to compare to any variety of fresh. Canned mushrooms are Nasty with a capital N.

Breadcrumbs: No doubt people make their own but we usually buy them pre-made. I would think you would want to toast the bread (or hamburger rolls if that is all you have) first. For toasting purposes I would do, oh I dunno, 350F for 5 minutes or so, then check on their progress?

Really, though, try the spaghetti sauce route. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

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Oh, as far as how long does it take and how will you know when they are done sauteeing? There are a lot of variables depending on how hot your stove is and the type of pan you have etc. but I would think they should be cooked in less than 10 minutes and like I said they will have shrunk somewhat and gotten a little shiny. Basically when they look like something you would want to eat they are done. Taste them if you aren’t sure.

If you want to cook them in the tomato sauce/chorizo/ground beef mixture I would pre-cook the meat if you haven’t already, drain off the grease, add the sauce and the chopped raw mushrooms, heat to a simmer and cook for at least half an hour (you can go much longer if you don’t let it burn), stirring occaisionally.

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If it were me, I’d saute the ground beef and add it to the spaghetti sauce (and of course, serve it with the cooked spaghetti).

I crumble the chorizo and mix it with some of the cheddar cheese and add some bread crumbs* to it. Stuff the mushrooms with it, and bake for about 10-15 minutes at about 375 degrees. Stuffed mushrooms are actually kind of hard to mess up. You don’t really need to be too exact with the recipe.

You didn’t say whether or not you have any spices in the house besides salt and pepper. If so, oregano and basil and garlic are good in the spaghetti sauce (as is a splash of red wine).
*You can toast the hamburger buns in the oven, or slice them horizontally so that they are thin enough to fit in the toaster. To use them in stuffed mushrooms, you can crumble the toasted bread into very small pieces, or pulse it in a blender…with some oregano and garlic powder if you have it.

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What Laughing Lagomorph said.

I can tell you that the bread will not mold if you leave it out. As long as there’s enough air around it, it will simply dry. You can speed the process by putting it in a warm oven (300 degrees or so) for an hour or so. Bread is far easier to crumble when it’s dry, so I’d suggest doing the drying first. You can make it into crumbs by rolling it in your fingers or by squishing it with a rolling pin after it’s completely dry. Hamburger buns, especially stale ones, are excellent for this purpose.

I made some really great (if I do say so) stuffed mushrooms the other day. I removed the stems, chopped them up, and sauteed them in butter (you could use olive oil) with garlic. I put in chopped spinach, too, but if you don’t have that, you can just mix bread crumbs (dry or not) in until the mixture looks right to you, grate some Parmesan cheese over that, stuff the caps, and bake them at 350 for 10 minutes.

If you decide to use the mushrooms in the sauce, be careful not to overcook them at the beginning. They do shrink down quite a bit, and if you cook them too long they’ll shrivel and start looking unappealingly like canned. Saute them in oil (the garlic is an excellent idea) over medium heat, and don’t add them until the oil is heated. Take them off the heat just when they start to shrink down and look cooked. You can add them to your sauce or just put them over the pasta before you pour the sauce on, which makes their flavor stand out a bit more.

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If you’re feeling adventurous you could try making mushroom duxelle. Brush off any dirt, chop the mushrooms into fairly small pieces, and cook over low heat in either olive oil or a mixture of half olive oil, half butter. If you like you can toss in some chopped onion or shallot too. Mushrooms have a pretty high moisture content and will at first give up this liquid into the pan. Keep cooking them until the liquid is almost all gone, the mixture will look kind of dry and dark. Season as you wish with salt and pepper. Now you can stir some of the duxelle into sauces for flavor, or fold it into an omelet, or use it as a fillling in some other dish, or even portion it out and freeze for future use. It keeps pretty well and can be a handy pantry item to have around.

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General rule with mushrooms is cook them til they give off quite a bit of liquid and then continue to cook until the liquid is re-absorbed.

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For three people
If you have a broiler.
chop the chorizo into fine peices, wash three mushrooms to remove dirt remove the stalks (but don’t throw them away).
Put the mushrooms cap side down on foil or a baking tray. Put the chopped chorizo and chedder cheese on the mushrooms stuffing them.

in a medium size pan fry up the mince, when browned add the remaining chorizo (if any) and the chopped mushroom stalks, and the other three mushrooms sliced. Cook a while longer on nmedium heat then add the bought pasta sauce mix and stir occasionally.

Put the broiler on medium heat and put the stuffed mushrooms under the broiler close to the the heating grill.
Cook for 10 minutes watching every few minutes to check the top of the mushroom isn’t getting burnt (move further away from heat if this starts to happen).
Meanwhile stir the pasta sauce. Season the sauce with a little salt and some black pepper.
You can either have the stuffed mushrooms as a starter (in which case keep the sauce simmering whilst you serve and eat them) or as a side dish in which case you will want to cook the pasta now and serve with the sauce and grated parmesan in a bowl by the side, and the stuffed mushrooms on a serving plate.

For less or than three people cook two stuffed mushrooms per person, for three or more one stuffed mushroom each should do, adjust the ammount of pasta and sauce according to how many people you are cooking for.

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PS dry bread crumbs can be made easily if you have a liquidizer. just cut the bread into chunks and liquidize until it is a fine powder. These will be soft bread crumbs, to dry them put them under a broiler on a cooking tin for a few minutes, watching carefully so they don’t burn.
The recipie above uses strictly only what you mentioned (plus salt and pepper) if you have any onions, dried herbs, olive oil etc. it can be improved by adding dried bread crumbs and a little olive oil to the mushroom stuffing, and chopped onions and dried herbs to the pasta sauce.

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Here’s an easy recipe for plain bread crumbs, as well as “Italian” bread crumbs. The most important step in this process is the cooling part. Hot or warm bread is much harder to crumble properly than cold bread is, so try not to be impatient with that part.

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Thank you Laughing Lagomorph, Cherry2000, InternetLegend, dwyr, DanBlather, Bippy the Beardless, and Shayna! There are lots of great tips here, exactly what I needed, and I’m going to print out this thread and keep it in the kitchen.

The Mexican market around the corner has these big mushrooms, 6 for $1.99. Now that I know what to do with them, I’ll start buying them more often.

I fixed the mushrooms that I had and they are so much better than canned. I knew they would be, but I had no idea! I’m looking forward to making dwyr’s mushroom duxelle, and Bippy’s stuffed mushrooms. (oh god, did I just say that? Me, cooking?? If you knew me you’d know how bizarre a concept that is, but they do sound good and I’m going to give it a whirl.)

Thank you thank you!

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Another question: is there a “trick” for getting the stems out in one piece? I was playing around, getting to know them, you might say (or not), and I wanted to see what they’d look like without the stems, pre-stuffed. I couldn’t seem to get the stems out in less than a couple dozen pieces. I suppose it doesn’t matter since if I stuff, the stems will be chopped up anyway. I’m just curious if there’s a way to just pop them out.

Thanks again.

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Just sliced mushrooms, sauteed in butter, with salt and pepper and maybe a little splash of dry white wine… then served on top of toast (eyes get big and hungry) (wanders off)

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Grab the stem just below the cap- twist and pull. Most or all will come out in one piece; any remaining stem can be pulled or bent until it snaps out.

My guess, though would be that this works better the fresher the mushroom is.

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Mushroom tacos: fresh mushrooms have a lovely meat-like consistency and also absorb seasonings very nicely. When I make tacos, I will often use half ground beef/half mushrooms for the “meat”*. Just brown the ground beef, lightly saute the mushrooms, then stir together and mix with the taco seasoning. Yummy and really easy to make!

*Can also be done with all mushrooms to make a vegetarian dish, but the half and half mixture is my favorite.