Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms - Italian Style
Portobello Mushrooms stuffed with Italian Bread, Italian Sausage, Italian Mozzarella Cheese, and Italian Parsley. It doesn't get any better than this with these heavenly stuffed mushrooms.
Equipment
- Garlic Press
Ingredients
Italian Sausage
- olive oil
- ¼ teaspoon red crushed pepper
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
- 1 package of ground Italian sausage
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ cup white wine
- 2 cloves garlic (pressed thru a garlic press)
- 1/2 cup onion (1 slice of a cross section of the onion, diced up)
Mushrooms
- 1 large package of large sized stuff-able portobello mushrooms (stems pulled out and clean)
- salt
Italian Bread Stuffing
- 7 slices of a round Italian Panella (cut into cubes)
- cooled cooked Italian Sausage (made above)
- 3 tablespoons fresh Italian parsley (finely chopped)
- 4 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese (half an 8oz bag)
- 1/4 cup white wine
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon pepper
- 1 egg
- 1 cup cold water
- ½ cup olive oil
Instructions
Italian Sausage
- In a large frying pan, heat up the olive oil, red crushed pepper, and fennel seeds (Tip: Place the fennel seeds in the palm of your hand and using your fingers break up the fennel seeds by pressing/rubbing them together with some pressure as you sprinkle them into the pan).
- When oil in the pan is heated, place in your ground Italian sausage in and with a wooden spoon start breaking it up into crumbles.
- Let the sausage cook until browned.
- When the sausage is browned, to the pan add in the pressed garlic cloves and quickly stir so that it doesn't burn. Let garlic cook about 1 min.
- Next add to the pan the chopped onion. Let onions cook until they turn translucent. Keep stir'ing so nothing burns.
- Once the onions are cooked, add white wine to the pan. Using your spoon scrap up all the brown parts in the pan. Cook until the wine evaporates.
- Turn your stove off, move the pan to a cold burner and let cool.
Mushrooms
- With each individual portobello mushroom, remove the stem and then clean the dirt off each one. (I rinse my mushrooms under cold water to clean them).
- Place the clean mushrooms on a parchment paper lined baking sheet.
- Sprinkle the mushrooms with a small amount of salt.
Bread Stuffing
- With the bread slices, slice the bread long ways and then slice the bread in the opposite direction. You want to make small cubes of bread. If you need to do it in small batches, please do. Whatever helps you create consistency in the size. Place the cubed bread into a medium-sized mixing bowl.(NOTE: I used roughly half of my round Italian Panella in the video which was about 7 slices.)
- By now your sausage should be cooled off. (If it is not, skip this step and go to the next steps and come back to this last). Add everything that is in the frying pan to the mixing bowl with the bread.
- Next, add fresh chopped parsley to the mixing bowl. (TIP: After washing your parsley, make sure to roll it in paper towels to get all the moisture off)
- Next add the shredded mozzarella cheese, white wine, salt, pepper, egg, water, olive oil to the bowl. (if you skipped the sausage add because it was still hot, it should be good now. Add it to the bowl).
- With clean hands or a large spoon, mix everything together until everything is fully incorporated.
Stuffing the Mushrooms
- With clean hands or a spoon, for each mushroom, loosely place the bread stuffing into the center of the mushroom cup until it's full and stays together.
Baking
- Cover the top of the baking sheet loosely with tin foil. Using a fork, poke some holes in the tin foil to let steam escape during the baking process.
- Place into a preheated 350 degree oven and bake for 45 minutes. Because mushrooms greatly vary in size, we need to do a visual check-in at this point. Lift the tin foil, if the base of the mushrooms look somewhat soft with some wrinkling (not mushy) and cooked, the mushrooms are done and you can move on to the next step. If the base of the mushrooms look firm and still like an uncooked mushroom, they need more time. Put the tin foil back on and bake an additional 15 min and do another visual check in. Continue to check in and bake with tin foil on at 15 minute intervals until the mushrooms base is somewhat soft with some wrinkling and cooked. (Note: The ones I baked in my video took 1 hr and 40 minutes to cook because they were large and very dense.)
- Once the mushroom bases look somewhat soft and cooked, remove the tin foil and let bake until the bread topping turns golden brown. (TIP: Don't walk away from the oven. Check in every 5 minutes to ensure you don't burn the bread stuffing.)
- Plate and enjoy.
Notes
**Ovens: Gas vs Electric Ovens. **
Gas ovens can bake hotter, if yours does reduce the baking temperature to 325 degrees to avoid getting a burnt outside edge on your loaf.
Electric ovens can bake cooler. There is a 20 to 25 degree difference in how an electric oven bakes compared to a gas oven. If you find that your electric oven generally takes longer to bake things, increase the temperature to 375 degrees to get the same result as baking at 350 degrees.