Fun fact – I am not a mushroom girl. And I’ve ate some pretty weird stuff in my life having traveled extensively, but mushrooms – nope. It stems from my childhood. Seeing a can of slimy, disgusting mushrooms at age 5 wasn’t my thing and while I grew out of most of my irrational childhood dislikes, I held strong onto my hate for mushrooms. Until recently. A good friend of mine said to me a year back or so “Heather have you ever had fresh mushrooms? They’re WAY better than those gross canned ones.” And I hadn’t. Once I’d swore of mushrooms they all went into the same category for me – DO NOT EAT. So I decided to give them a try.
I remember my first time – I was at a local restaurant called Zins and they had asparagus wrapped in fresh mushrooms with Parmesan cheese. Zins offers a tapa’s type dining – small meals to share but without the Spanish flair that I truly love about tapas. So I figured since I was sharing them, I may as well give them a try. I slowly took a bite and started to chew….and another bite…and another….”hell, these aren’t half bad” I thought. And so it began. I slowly would order mushrooms in or on things. Nothing crazy. I wasn’t ordering a mushroom pizza but I wouldn’t pick them off of a combination pizza anymore. I’d been taking baby steps for awhile and even went so far as to buy a package of fresh mushrooms, but to be honest they simply sat in my fridge, staring at me each time I opened the door.
Then, last week I was invited to attend a “healthy” potluck group at work and decided to jump on the bandwagon. I searched my favorite food blogs high and low for something that was healthy, yet would be easy to make and bring to work. While on one of my favorite food blogs, Skinnytaste, I came across a recipe for bacon and spinach stuffed mushrooms. And I decided to take the plunge and give them a try. Oy veh, am I sure glad I did – they were FANTASTIC! So fantastic I’m desperately searching for some event in which I can make the damn things again.
So here is a breakdown of how I made this recipe; I’m not good at following directions so I made some adjustments. The entire recipe is posted at the end:
Take your mushrooms and remove the stems from the caps.
Next, line a baking sheet with foil and cover with a light layer of cooking spray. Place the caps on the foil and sprinkle LIGHTLY with salt (you’ll understand why very soon – you’re going to be using a TON of garlic).
Finely dice up the mushroom stems and keep them in a bowl seperate from any other ingredients.
In a skillet, place spinach and cook until it wilts, about 1-2 minutes. Squeeze any extra moisture out of the spinach (this works good in a paper towel) and mince the spinach. Make sure the skillet is clean and fry 6-8 pieces of bacon. I recommend 8 pieces and eating a few, but do what you want. Chop up the bacon and add in with minced spinach.
Here’s where this gets delicious. You can clean out your skillet of the bacon grease or use a new skillet if you want. This would be the healthiest option. OR, if you love flavor and awesomeness, leave the bacon grease in the skillet and add the olive oil and garlic.
Let’s also be clear here – you could follow the directions and use the amount of garlic posted but I would
absolutely use way more than a normal person. Fact – garlic is awesome. I totally cheated and just used a jar of minced garlic I had in the fridge and I used 5 BIG spoonfuls.
Saute the garlic for a few minutes and add in the minced mushroom stems, sauteing for a another couple of minutes.
Remove from heat and in a bowl combine the garlic and mushrooms with a spinach and bacon. Add in the Parmesan and breadcrumbs and combine.
Press the mixture into the mushrooms and line on the baking sheet.
Bake for 20 minutes and voila!
These little things are PACKED full of flavor and deliciousness! The recipe below is my altered recipe and this made about 22-24 mushrooms. I did have stuffing leftover and could have made 2/3 to a full other package of mushrooms, depending on the size. Here is the link for the healthier version from Skinnytaste of bacon and spinach stuffed mushrooms; there are other great recipes to try on her site so I recommend you check out her food blog as well!
Spinach and Bacon Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients:
- 14 oz (2 packages) fresh, full mushrooms, stems separated
- 4 garlic cloves, sliced thin (I used minced garlic and used 4 BIG spoonful’s – I love garlic J )
- 2 bags fresh baby spinach
- 8 slices center cut bacon (I actually only used 6 slices in this recipe because I ate two slices)
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
- 4 tbsp shredded Parmesan cheese (4 tbsp ish…a little more cheese is never a bad thing in my book)
- Cooking spray
Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 400°F. Lightly spray a foil lined baking pan or baking dish with cooking spray.
2) Remove stems from mushrooms and mince fine. Set aside.
- Do not combine these with any other ingredients as you’ll need to eventually sauté these later on.
3) Heat a medium sized skillet. Rinse spinach and add to the skillet; cook until it wilts, about 2 minutes. Remove from the pan, squeeze excess liquid and chop fine. Set aside.
- I used a big skillet and had to cook one bag at a time.
- The spinach will be too hot to touch for a bit, so if you don’t have time to let it cool set on a couple sheets of paper towels and squeeze excess liquid from them.
4) Dry skillet, add bacon to the skillet and cook on low heat until bacon is cooked through. Set aside on a paper towel. Coarsely chop.
- You can use turkey bacon as a healthier alternative however I used a lean bacon with not a lot of fat so it was easier to chop and crumble up.
5) Clean skillet and add olive oil to the pan. Add garlic and sauté until golden, about 2 minutes.
- I did not clean the skillet and instead added my olive oil and garlic right into the bacon grease. If you want to save a few calories then clean the skillet, however cooking in bacon grease gives a great flavor you won’t otherwise get. Also great to cook in bacon grease – corn, especially right off the cob. Sorry, I’m digressing…
6) Add minced mushroom stems and sauté until soft, about 2 minutes.
7) Remove from heat and combine mushroom stems with sautéed spinach, bacon, bread crumbs, and parmesan cheese.
8) Season mushroom caps with salt. Fill mushrooms with spinach mixture. Place on your baking sheet or oven safe dish and bake 20 minutes or until golden.
- I didn’t season mine with salt because I used so much garlic. And I think Blue Zones says garlic is good and salt is bad, so there you go!
Makes approximately 22-24 mushrooms and I did have some filling left over, it just depends on the size of the mushrooms you buy.
Also, if you like spicy and want to give these a kick you can season the mixture with red pepper flakes and/or reduce the parmesan and combine with shredded pepper jack.
Adventures of a Full-time Foodie 