Make risotto, soup, pasta, and even bloody marys using your favorite mushrooms
Fall is the best time of year to go hunting for mushrooms which also means it’s the best time of year to cook mushrooms. The versatility of these meaty fungi cannot be understated: You can throw mushrooms into a soup, roast them on a sheet pan, add them to pasta, spear them into skewers — the options are endless. If you find yourself with a bounty of mushrooms, here are Eater staff’s favorite methods of using them.
Mushroom Bourguignon
Deb Perelman, Smitten Kitchen
A reality most of us have to face sooner or later is that the most flavorful, exciting mushrooms — your morels, your chanterelles — aren’t the kind of mushrooms typically found in the grocery store. Smitten Kitchen’s Mushroom Bourguignon is the best recipe I’ve found for transforming cremini mushrooms, which get more points for their meaty texture than flavor, into a robust, velvety stew demanding of chilly nights. It comes together quickly, with red wine and tomato paste adding umami richness to an herby broth, while pearl onions provide balancing bursts of sweetness. I have made traditional beef bourguignon once, and have not felt the need to do so again since making this recipe. — Jaya Saxena, correspondent
Famous Mushroom Soup
The Grape Restaurant
When I first moved to town, the Grape had been a Dallas dining icon for nearly 50 years. It was one of the first “fancy” restaurants I ever visited. Unfortunately, it closed in 2019, but my memories of the cozy neighborhood French bistro are eternally fond, and its iconic cream of mushroom soup recipe lives on in my kitchen. I have since adjusted the recipe’s quantities and proportions to suit my own tastes and limited freezer space, but this is a soup worthy of making a giant batch. It’s exquisitely creamy, full of rich mushroom flavor, and perfect for dunking crackers or batons of bread into on a chilly fall day. And as Thanksgiving approaches, it’s also the ultimate substitute for that condensed stuff in the can, the kind of secret ingredient that takes your Thanksgiving green bean casserole from basic to beyond belief. — Amy McCarthy, reporter
Coconut-Braised Mushrooms with Ginger and Scallions
Chris Morocco, Bon Appétit
This recipe always makes me thankful to have a can of coconut milk in the pantry. Taking cues from rendang, it calls for cooking mushrooms in spiced coconut milk to the point that the coconut milk thickens and separates into a rich, brown coating that swaddles the mushroom chunks, and a bit of flavorful, gold-hued oil that’s sopped up nicely by warm rice. Though the recipe calls for simply adding the mushrooms to the simmering coconut milk mixture, I prefer to sear them, lightly oiled, in the pot first, since I think it yields better flavor and texture. A variety of sturdy mushrooms with different textures works best, in my experience; I love a mix of shiitake, king oyster, and regular oyster mushrooms. And to better pay homage to the dish of inspiration, I’ve also taken to swapping in Auria’s Malaysian Kitchen’s rendang spice blend for the curry powder and Peppadew peppers. — Bettina Makalintal, senior reporter
Creamy Mushroom and Bacon Pasta
Namiko Hirasawa Chen, Just One Cookbook
I am a recent mushroom convert and this is one of the recipes that helped me see the light. It turns out that searing off mushrooms in bacon fat and then tossing the meaty mixture with cream and pasta tastes really good. I think the key here is to use high quality mushrooms (I opted for oyster mushrooms, but shimeji and maitake would be outstanding here too), ensure they’re cooked down, and just melt into the sauce. I love the way the umami of the mushroom plays off the savoriness of the soy sauce, all of which is tamed by milk and cream. The best part is that it comes together in half an hour. — Kat Thompson, associate editor
Mushroom Risotto with Peas
Martha Rose Shulman, NYT Cooking
I think at least half of making a really good risotto is having some type of spidey sense for Italian cooking, but this recipe for mushroom risotto is a pretty good place to start. A risotto is deceivingly simple — at its core the dish is made of just wine, carnaroli or Arborio rice, olive oil, and some type of cooking broth. But the entire process is a delicate dance of adding the right amount of ingredients at the right time (and at the right temperature), then agitating the grains to achieve a creamy consistency without pushing the cook too far. Luckily, this recipe breaks it down to the minute to offer a process that can be easily perfected, and tweaked if need be. Spending a little more on fancy mushrooms is worth it here, as their flavor will make or break this dish. — Rebecca Roland, Eater LA associate editor
Sheet-Pan Gnocchi With Mushrooms and Spinach
Ali Slagle, NYT Cooking
I am an oyster mushroom fiend, and one of the ways I most regularly use them is this mushroom-gnocchi-spinach recipe from recipe developer extraordinaire (and former Eater contributor) Ali Slagle. This is a mushroom lover’s ideal weeknight recipe: Instead of cooking its components separately, you bake them all together on a sheet pan, which means that the only effort really required here is tearing the mushrooms and tossing everything with olive oil, salt, and pepper. You don’t even have to boil the gnocchi first; tossed with oil, it becomes crisp and creamy as it bakes. The accompanying horseradish honey mustard sauce is also mind-numbingly simple, and happens to be quite delicious. While I usually make the recipe as directed, sometimes I’ll substitute kale for spinach or add more mushrooms, because like any good mushroom fiend, I know that too much is just enough. — Rebecca Flint Marx, Eater at Home editor
Shiitake Bloody Mary
Aliza Abarbanel, Smallhold
Since the great mushroom resurgence of the early 2020s, wonderful recipes for our favorite fungi abound. However, few of these new-school mushroom recipes over-deliver on ingenuity and umami like this shiitake bloody mary. The recipe was created by a certified B corporation and urban farm, Smallhold, for their cookbook Mushroom in the Middle, and then later published on the farm’s blog. Shockingly, the process for this deviously whimsical take is much simpler than you might expect; the drink is propped up by a home-brewed shiitake vodka made by dropping dried shiitakes into a non-reactive vessel with a half liter of vodka. That’s it. Plus, the recipe produces enough of the earthy spirit to hold you over for your next few get-togethers with family and friends. (And if beer doesn’t suit your fancy, Punch has a Champagne-fueled sipper that’s sure to leave you fawning over fungi.) — Jesse Sparks, senior editor
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