Stuffed Button Mushrooms

Many years ago when I had the restaurant I used to make stuffed button mushrooms and sell them in packages for folks to take home and bake. They were a pretty popular items in my food to go line up. Today we are getting together with friends and when I spotted the mushrooms on sale for $1.00 per box it was obvious that stuffed mushrooms would be my food contribution. These are really simple to make and fairly inexpensive as well. The biggest amount of time is cleaning and removing the stems.

I brought the mushrooms to the card gathering ready to bake as well as toting my camera so I could get a picture after they were baked. With everyone wanting to get some food in their bellies I really wasn't able to "set up" to take a good shot of the finished dish and honestly it wasn't until people started to grab these delicious stuffed mushrooms to put on their plates that I remembered that I should snap a shot. Well it's a little over a year later and I made these for another gathering I am attending so I took some more photos. This is way better than the horrendous shot that was here before.

Everyone raved about them - the recipe made 33 in total and at the end of the night only three caps remained. I would say that is a good gauge as to how great they tasted. I used the white button mushrooms, however you can use the baby bellas as well.

To make this dish simple, use your food processors to grind the crackers, pulse to break down the imitation crab to very small pieces and use it to almost grind the onion down.

• 4 - 10 oz. packages mushrooms
• 1 1/2 sleeves Ritz® crackers
• 1/3 lb. imitation crab (a.k.a. pollock) - fine dice
• 1 stick butter
• 1/2 medium onion - fine dice
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/3 cup Parmesan cheese
• 1 tbsp. paprika
• 1/4 cup dried parsley
• 1 1/2 tsp. granulated garlic
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/2 tsp. salt

1. Clean your mushrooms and remove the stems. Save the stems to use in making a vegetable stock.
2. In the food processor grind the crackers to a fine grind and place them in a large bowl.
3. Next pulse the pollock until it is fairly tiny and add that to the cracker mixture. Stir around well with your hands.
4. Lastly, in the food processor pulse the onion until it is finely chopped. I cut the onion in small chunks prior to adding into the food processor.
5. Melt the entire stick of butter in a small frying pan. Add in the finely diced onion and saute for about 2 minutes over medium low heat.
6. Add in the white wine and cook and reduce for about 5 minutes over medium heat.
7. When the wine, onion and butter mixture has cooled slightly, add to the bowl with the pollock and crackers.
8. Add in the Parmesan cheese and all of the dried spices and mix well. I used my hands as they do the best job.
9. Fill each mushroom cap with a good amount of the mixture. The mixture will pull together because of the butter and it makes it easy to stuff and kind of pat down the mixture in and on the cap of the mushroom.
10. Bake in a preheated 350° oven for about 40-45 minutes.

Before heading into the oven:

This recipe made 33 mushrooms and cost me $6.77 for the whole batch. The low cost is attributed to getting these fabulous white button mushrooms - stuffing size for only $1.00 per box. That made our cost for our card night snack bring a long very inexpensive.

The next time you are having a special day with friends or family be sure to keep this easy and scrumptious appetizer in the back of your mind so you too can wow your guests. These really were a huge hit and I was so happy my friends were pleased. And as a final note, my "I don't like any kind of stuffing" husband devoured a half dozen of these. Or should I say, "inhaled".