I’m sorry if I’ve mislead you to think this is a burger post. This will actually be more about mushrooms because I am so sick of going out to eat and being served undercooked mushrooms. Using a burger as a vehicle, we’re gonna prepare some delicious roasted mushrooms with bleu cheese but please, this can go over crostini, over polenta, add it to steaks, literally anything.
I would 90% of people I meet don’t realize or just don’t understand how to cook mushrooms. Mushrooms are a fungus but even more so, a sponge. They have the ability to take on and hold great flavors that they are introduced too. They also have the ability to become super earthy and robust. But for some reason when I’m served mushrooms, they’re often soggy and really just tasteless.
Here’s a good rule of thumb, when you think your mushrooms are done- cook them for twice as long. The first 5-8 minutes of cooking mushrooms really just browns them. you begin to get a crust, sure some liquid escapes but if you were to pull and serve them as is, chances are I could take one of those little guys and still squeeze out a considerable amount of liquid. The more liquid left in your mushrooms the more its left tasteless. If you’ve ever opened a box of dried mushrooms, fresh mushrooms should taste how that smells. PERIOD. Taking the additional 5 or 10 minutes to continue to roast these mushrooms to a darker consistency, which is usually deemed burnt, will make the load of difference. Your mushrooms wont burn because theres still a good amount of liquid in them. They should shrink by at least half in size when they are ready.
What You’ll Need:
1 pint mushrooms, chopped fresh. You can use Bella’s, shiitakes, cremini’s, etc.
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 small bundle of fresh thyme
Salt + Pepper to taste
…and just because I know you’re curious, I used Cambazola Blue Cheese for this burger. In fact, if I’m ever eating blue on food I usually opt for this cheese. It’s not terribly expensive, it’s already super soft and creamy without really having to be melted and the flavor is prominent yet mild for a blue.
In a cast iron pan, begin heating up the olive oil and 1 tablespoon of the butter. When it gets ripping hot, add your mushrooms and drop the temperature down to medium/medium-high. Make sure all of the mushrooms and layered evenly and everything is touching the surface of the pan. Allow these mushrooms to sit just like this for 2-3 minutes, do not touch them. AFter they begin getting some good color, turn them over to evenly get all sides. Again, cook for another 2-3 minutes. At this stage the avearge person would take these off and serve them, but not you! You now know better.
Add a good pinch of salt to the mushrooms to help expel some of that liquid still trapped in there. Give them a toss and keep moving them over medium high heat. At this stage I like to add some fresh thyme. The pan will be mostly dry at this point so the oils in the herbs will heat up and fill your kitchen with aroma. If your pan is getting to dry, add olive oil a teaspoon at a time but a little at this point will go a long way. When the mushrooms have shrunk in size, by atleast half or so, youre almost there. Add the last tablesppon of butter and melt into the mushrroms.
Now Matt I just took my time drying these mushrooms out, why would I add butter? Well you did a great job drying them out and atleast 80-90% of the moisture is now gone. We are going to replace some of that moisture with just butter because more foods should contain more butter than moisture itself, in my opinion.
Why do we do this? To be honest after your first run with this it will be quite self explanatory. But mushrooms are one of the earthiest ingredients we get to play with but half the time we dont really achieve there full flavor profile. Cook your mushrooms thoroughly, dry them in the pan, I promise you wont look at mushrooms the same again.
