Background: I love mushrooms but no one in my family likes them. So when I have time to myself or I’m mad at them for yelling at me while I’m making dinner, I make these mushrooms. I use oil so it’s a vegan ingredient. I’m not a vegan but I love the challenge of putting together vegan dishes that taste good.
- Buy some whole mushrooms. White button mushrooms will work, but all the other mushrooms out there are more interesting. I use crimini and blue oyster mushrooms.
- Slice them thin or thick, but imagine scenarios for both thin dry sauteed mushrooms and thick juicy braised mushrooms. This recipe will make both.
- Buy a can or bottle of stout beer.
- Get a cast iron pan ripping hot and add oil.
- Turn on the hood and add the mushrooms in a single layer quickly before the smoke alarm goes off.
- Salt and pepper to taste.
- Cook until the edges get brown (or more brown, anyway).
- Take about half of the mushrooms out and save for another move.
- Deglaze the pan with with some beer. You should have plenty left to drink.
- Scrape the pan with a wooden spatula to get the fond of the bottom.
- Simmer until the liquid is nappe (thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and stay separate when run your finger across the back).
- Toss the mushrooms in the liquid a few times and serve or store.
Why It Works:
- I add crimini mushrooms to whichever ones I pick (usually blue oyster mushrooms because they are the cheapest of the interesting mushrooms).
- If you can imagine more scenarios where you’d want drier sauteed mushrooms, slice thin ones. If you like dishes with more chunky juicy.
- You can try this with any beer you like. I like the deep color and sweetness of a stout. A porter would work. A brown ale would work. It should also be a beer you like to drink.
- You could do this in any pan, but I find the high heat of a cast iron pan and hot oil leads to a great initial sauté.
- If you want all the mushrooms to be a softer texture and you don’t want to pull any before adding the beer, then it’s not necessary to have a single layer. You can just do one big batch.
- I like course ground black pepper and kosher salt.
- You should start to see a fair amount of Maillard reaction.
- I like to take some mushrooms our at this stage because I love the flavor and texture. Now I have a dry prepped mushroom for things like stir fries and a saucy mushrooms for steaks and pastas.
- The deglaze step used to be a step I used after doing the 7 steps above to clean the pan. (Yes, I know it’s cast iron. You could do this in another pan if you are precious about your cast iron.)
- This is where a lot of the flavor is. You are going to reduce it down.
- You can pull your mushrooms out at any point here when you like the texture, but want to reduce the liquid further.
- I like to eat the dry ones right away in eggs, stir fries, quesadillas and other dishes where moisture would make the texture weird. The saucy ones are great over meats or grains like brown rice or farro. Pizza would be a great choice for the dry mushrooms.
Mods:
- Definitely try this with butter, making sure to note the smoke point will be lower. Even if you are vegan but cook for ovo-lacto folks, this could be worth trying. In that case, I might try to pull some of the mushrooms for the vegans and then monter au beurre at the end for those who eat butter.
- Throw these on the grill or smoker in a perforated grill-safe vessel. (I use an old stainless steel, flat-bottomed colander.) The smoked version is even better.
- You could add some onions to the mix at the same time as the mushrooms if you know that in every instance you’d serve these, you’d also want onions.
- You could do the same move with red wine, white wine, or sherry.