Award winning mushroom!
A Top Chef winner I am not, neither am I a Chopped Champion, Cutthroat Kitchen, MasterChef or even Worst Cook in American winner. BUT, I did win two recipe contest with my recipe for Italian Stuffed Mushrooms. This was way, way back in the 70’s; I can’t believe I have never posted this recipe before.
I put together this recipe back in the 70’s when we lived in Louisville. It all started with a contest (I love contest and I love competition) and me trying to come up with something original to enter; I didn’t want the usual sausage stuffed or crab stuffed mushroom so I just started putting together some ingredients and came up with this and 40 years later still use the same recipe.
After winning these contests and these was the only ones I ever won, I started sending recipes to Southern Living Magazine. For every recipe they printed (and I think they printed 5 of mine), they sent me 50 recipe cards that said “my recipe printed in Southern Living magazine” and then at the end of the year, they sent me the annual cookbook which also had my recipes printed in it. This was one recipe they printed. I started this recipe with some chopped up onion, pepperoni, mozzarella cheese and italian season and some garlic powder, I also added some Italian seasoned bread crumbs. I don’t know why anyone would bother counting carbs in this recipe; the bread crumbs are only 25 carbs for all the filling. So put them in if you want to.
I’m sitting here typing up the recipe still in disbelief that I never shared this with you. I never really made this for any of my catering jobs (maybe once or twice) because I like to serve these right out of the oven and never cared for the way mushrooms looked when they sat in the oven too long. If you make these, and I hope you will, you can make the filling the day before, fill the mushroom caps and cook right as your guest arrive.
A funny thing happened the first time I made these and I’m almost ashamed to tell you but ya know the little package of preservative stuff that comes in with the already cut pepperoni; well, when I was putting the slices into my food processor to chop up I was in a hurry and forgot to look for that little package and it was shredded with it’s contents into my pepperoni. I had to start all over with the chopping and I have never made that mistake again.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Mushroom Turnovers in Cream Cheese Pastry is another one of my favorite mushroom appetizer recipes.
Chop mushroom stems finely.
Finely chop onions.
In 1/2 of the butter, sauté the onions and mushrooms for 5-6 minutes.
Chop up the pepperoni by hand or put in food processor until small pieces.
Mix the pepperoni, cheese, breadcrumbs and spices with the cooled onions and mushroom stems.
Fill the mushroom caps with stuffing and add sliced green olives to top.
Italian Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients
- 1 lb. fresh mushrooms
- 1/3 c. melted butter divided
- 1/3 c. chopped onion
- 1/3 c. chopped pepperoni
- 1/3 c. mozzarella cheese shredded
- 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
- 1/4 tsp. garlic salt
- 1/3 c. seasoned breadcrumbs
- green olives sliced, for garnish
Instructions
- Clean mushrooms with a damp paper towel or wash them and then dry. Remove the stems and finely chop stems.
- In 1/2 of the melted butter, sauté the onion and mushroom stems until translucent. Cool and add in the chopped pepperoni, cheese, Italian seasoning, garlic salt and the breadcrumbs. Mix thoroughly. Use the other 1/2 of the melted butter to rub over mushroom caps. (I usually just pour it over the mushrooms and kind of gently toss them so they get coated.)
- Stuff each mushroom cap full of the stuffing mixture and then press 1/2 of green olive (or slice) into top of mushrooms. Bake in 350° oven until browned, about 15 minutes or so.
- Note: As you can see in the picture, I tried to bake the mushrooms on the tray I was going to serve them from. The mushrooms cooked out a lot of liquid which I had to sop up with paper towels. I never cook them this way. Normally I cook on tray with an edge to catch the juices and when they are done transfer to serving platter. I think cooking them so close together like this make them steam out more liquid than normal.
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