Stuffed Mushrooms

By Shaylie

Ingredients

• 20 crimini or button mushrooms (large ones will weigh a total of about 1.5 pounds, and make sure you pick good, big ones!)
• 1/2 pound ground meat – Italian sausage is my recommendation
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 4 ounces grated, whole fat mozzarella cheese
• 8 ounces full fat cream cheese
• 6 green onions
• optional: 1 tsp chili flakes and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan

Preparation

Step 1

Crank up the oven to 350 degrees.
Take your ground beef and fry it up in the sauce pan. If you purchased it in casings, you’ll need to remove it. Make sure to break the meat up into small pieces as you fry it.
As the meat fries, wash your mushrooms. If you do it quickly and use the colander, they won’t soak in much water, so just get them clean!
Break the stems off of the mushrooms and lay them on the baking sheet cap-side down.
Cut the dried end off of the mushroom stems. Cut them up finely. These will be replacing your breadcrumbs, so try not to make them too chunky.
By this time the meat should be done cooking. Drain it in the colander.
Rinse the pain out, and then add the olive oil. When it’s hot, add the mushroom stem pieces, garlic, oregano, parsley, and onion powder. Saute the mix up until the mushroom pieces are tender and have lost most of their moisture.
While the mushroom bits cook, put the cream cheese into the bowl and microwave for 20-40 seconds to soften it.
Grate the mozzarella and slice the tops only of the green onions. Leave the whites of the onions out.
Add the mozzarella, green onions, meat, mushroom mix, and the optional Parmesan and chili flakes to the cream cheese and mix it up really well.
Use a scoop to mound up the filling on the mushrooms. You want to fill in the cavity and leave little bumped up top too.
Place them in the oven to bake.
It’ll take about 15-20 minutes to soften the mushrooms and brown the tops.