Mushrooms make for very interesting starters. I had first made these stuffed mushroom cups for a Christmas party and it was a hit. Since I had a mixed crowd of people who ate vegetarian and non vegetarian food, I had kept the filling purely vegetarian. And that’s the best part of this recipe. You can add ingredients as per your choice. If you eat bacon, then some fried bacon bits would make a great addition to the filling too.

Few things to keep in mind

• Choosing the right mushroom size: We are using button mushrooms for this recipe. Be careful to choose larger size mushrooms and which have a good shape. It just makes the final dish look prettier! If you do have a few smaller ones or broken ones, we will use them in the filling.
• Filling: Feel free to add other ingredients – vegetables or meat – to the filling and make it more interesting for your family!

Recipe

Ingredient List

• Mushrooms – 400 gms, select the large size ones for baking
• Butter / Oil – 2 tbsp
• Garlic – 7-8 cloves finely chopped
• Bread Crumbs – 1/2 cup
• Salt
• Italian Seasoning – 1 tsp
• Chilli Flakes – 1 tsp
• Pepper – 1/2 tsp
• Cream Cheese – 3 tbsp
• Grated Processed Cheese – 2 cubes or about 40-50 gms of Mozzarella Cheese

Step by Step Process

1. Preheat oven to 200C and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Separate the large size mushrooms from the tiny ones. Remove the stems of the large size ones carefully and keep them aside. Take these stems along with all the small mushrooms and chop them fine.
3. In a pan, add the butter and once melted, add the garlic. Fry it till fragrant.
4. Add the chopped mushrooms and cook it on high flame for a couple of minutes.
5. To this, add the bread crumbs and let it all cook together for another minute. The mushroom mixture dries up on adding the bread crumbs.
6. Season with some salt, pepper, Italian seasoning and chilli flakes and turn off the heat.
7. Let the mushroom mix cool and then add the cream cheese and some of the grated cheese and mix it all together.
8. Fill the mushroom caps with this filling mixture and top it up with the remaining grated cheese.
9. Bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 20 min. The cheese on top should have melted and mushrooms will be almost cooked through too.