Stuffed Mushrooms

[Okanagancook]

Bumping this thread up because today I'm making some of my favourite stuffed mushrooms.  The recipe is from Foods of the World Series:  The Cooking of Provincial France, page 87 in the recipe booklet.  I just love this series and have used the recipes for a long time.  One tends to forget about them but when I am looking for a favourite recipe it can be found amongst the books in this series.

 

There are three stuffing variations to the recipe and I think I have made all three but the easiest is #3

1.  Crab meat

2.  Spinach

3.  Mushroom

 

I had to play it by hear a bit because my mushrooms where brown and they were very, very large.  I had a few button mushrooms left in the fridge that needed using up so I chopped them up along with the scrapings from the inside of the brown mushrooms to be stuffed.  This is squeezed in a towel to extract as much moisture as possible.

 

Fry some shallot (I only used the two small shallots in the picture) and green onion tops in butter for a few minutes.  Add the chopped mushrooms and fry for ten minutes until lightly browned and taste for seasoning.

 

Meanwhile make a béchamel sauce, chop a bit of parsley, grate some Swiss cheese.

 

When the mushroom mixture is ready, mix in the béchamel and parsley.  Stuff this into the mushrooms and top with a dusting of bread crumbs, cheese and finally dot with little chunks of butter. 

 

I made four but they are very rich so we'll be having one each tonight and the other two tomorrow.  Too much of a good thing diminishes the enjoyment.....Thomas Keller's philosophy:  don't give them too much....they need to be looking around and asking if there is anymore...to which one replies "no that's it".

 

They are in the fridge ready to be baked at 350 for 10 to 15 minutes.  Because the brown mushrooms are so large, I think they may even take 20 minutes.

We'll see.  Hopefully I can remember to take a picture of the finished mushrooms on my dinner plate.

 

 

 

[TdeV]

@Okanagancook, if you had lots of mushrooms to use up but only two persons to feed for dinner, what would you do with the extra mushrooms? Keep raw in the fridge until tomorrow? Cook them? Freeze them raw, stuffed or unstuffed?

[Okanagancook]

If the mushrooms were really old then I would probably slice and fry then freeze on a cookie sheet then transfer to a bag.  It's nice to be able to grab a handful of mushrooms out of the freezer.

One can't freeze these stuffed mushrooms because the béchamel sauce would break. 

[TdeV]

So they keep in the fridge? Cooked or uncooked?

[Okanagancook]

The uncooked stuffed mushrooms are in the fridge and I should think they would keep a day...any longer and the salt in the stuffing might start drawing moisture out of the raw mushroom.  I debated about cooking them all tonight then reheating tomorrow but the cheese gets a nice crust on it when it is right out of the oven.

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Before any kind of storage, you are remembering to always remove mushrooms from any plastic wrap and place in paper instead?     One of my major laments is grocery stores' replacing small paper bags in the produce section with plastic.   NO, NO, NO, NEVER!

[gfweb]

6 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Before any kind of storage, you are remembering to always remove mushrooms from any plastic wrap and place in paper instead?     One of my major laments is grocery stores' replacing small paper bags in the produce section with plastic.   NO, NO, NO, NEVER!

The mushroom growers around here sell them in sealed plastic bags.  They seem to do fine.

[Okanagancook]

33 minutes ago, gfweb said:

The mushroom growers around here sell them in sealed plastic bags.  They seem to do fine.

That’s interesting.  Goes against the idea that moisture is a mushroom’s worse enemy in terms of storage life.  I always use paper bags on the fridge shelf rather than the veggie bin.

[gfweb]

15 minutes ago, Okanagancook said:

That’s interesting.  Goes against the idea that moisture is a mushroom’s worse enemy in terms of storage life.  I always use paper bags on the fridge shelf rather than the veggie bin.

 

I always thought so. But the shrooms certainly last over a week in a plastic bag.

 

Guess a little experimentation is in order.

[TdeV]

The mushrooms in my fridge do A LOT BETTER inside a paper bag than wrapped in cling plastic.

[TdeV]

4 hours ago, TdeV said:

The mushrooms in my fridge do A LOT BETTER inside a paper bag than wrapped in cling plastic.

 

Actually, I could restate this. Mushrooms in machine-sealed plastic bag from the Chinese market, last just fine over one week. Mushrooms in styrofoam from any of the huge grocery stores, might get mouldy in a week; will definitely get mouldy a few days later. Mushrooms in a plastic bag from the vegetable section of the grocery story will definitely get slimy within a week.

 

Mushrooms from the grower in a holey plastic container inside a paper bag will last well over two weeks. Eventually, they will get a little dry (chewy) but no mould. I don't know how much this increased storage life has to do with the total storage time (i.e. the other mushrooms may have been shipped long distance before hanging out in my fridge, which would shorten their viability in my fridge).

 

This is true of strawberries also.

Edited June 23, 2019 by TdeV
Clarity (log)

[Okanagancook]

The take home story to all this is....don’t buy too many mushrooms beyond what you intend to use within a few days.🙃

[Okanagancook]

They were delicious.  The ones in the fridge have not leached any moisture.  They look just like I put them in there yesterday.

[scubadoo97]

19 hours ago, gfweb said:

The mushroom growers around here sell them in sealed plastic bags.  They seem to do fine.

 

Ive never had luck with mushrooms stored in plastic.    Even the plastic top to a paper basket causes the mushrooms to get a little  slimy.   When I get a basket of shrooms I remove the plastic wrapper and after removing what I want to use I take a paper towel and cover the top tucking it all around the mushrooms and return it to the refrigerator.   They seen to last a very long time this way and the only thing that happens if they have been too long in the fridge (a few weeks) is they start to dry out.  

[kayb]

I have sauteed and frozen extra mushrooms that needed to be used. Worked pretty well.