Sauted Mushrooms

This is a old standby of mine, something quick that I can throw in with just about anything when I’m in a rush and don’t have time to think up a meal for dinner (Which is when I do most of my cooking. I’m not much of a breakfast person – a muffin or something and I’m good – and at lunch time I’m usually too busy or too far from a stove to bother.).

Ingredients:
Mushrooms (any kind, any amount)
Onions (about one per cup of mushrooms)
1 Tbls butter (per cup or so of mushrooms)
1/2 cup white wine (Reislings are what I really like here)
1 cup of stock (beef works best but anything will do, really)
minced garlic
Olive oil (for drizzling)
1 tsp flour
Salt
Pepper

Equipment:
Pan
Stove
Spatula


Now, any kind of mushroom works here as long as it’s fresh. You can go the reconstituted route but those always taste a bit rubbery (which I can’t stand when it comes to mushrooms) to me so I don’t. I generally just buy a tub of button mushrooms at the store but when I’m getting really fancy I’ll head to the produce market and mix and match a bunch of whatever’s looking fresh and tasty – the more kinds of mushroom the more flavors the dish will have at the end.

First, scrub the mushrooms clean. This is a really important step especially if you’ve got good mushrooms because they’re grown and picked right out of the dirt so if you don’t clean them off they’ll have some nasty dirt clods in them somewhere and I can’t speak for everyone but that’s not exactly what I want to find on the end of my fork. Now, some people will say you need to take a dry brush and scrape for all you’re worth but, personally, I find that running the faucet a bit and using my fingers to scrub off any dirt I can see works just as well. Just don’t leave them in a bowl full of water or anything because mushrooms – as you’re about to find out if you follow this recipe – are very eager to suck up any liquids so they can become waterlogged very, very easily (which is why some people don’t like to rinse them at all, of course). Trim off the bottom of the stem or any other inedible part and then chop them up. It doesn’t really matter if they’re finely chopped or in even pieces or anything just that they’re smaller and thinner than they are to start.

While that’s going on melt the butter in your pan. Once it gets nice and warm, throw in the onions (also chopped) and some olive oil and turn the burner to medium-hot. The oil will help keep the butter from browning too much (I like it when it’s just starting to get a bit tan myself but, then, I like to eat burnt popcorn) and turning everything nasty by raising the temperature at which it starts to burn. Cook the onions until they’re sweating out all their juices and starting to turn translucent or are starting to brown. There’s plenty of cooking left so they’ll get their eventually you just want the onions to flavor the butter/oil mixture.

Now, throw in the mushrooms and the garlic (you don’t want to add it too soon or it’ll burn) and turn the heat up higher. Salt and pepper to taste. Let everything sauté which means, basically, jump around from the heat. You can leave it a bit alone as you want it to get nice and brown (Not black, mind, but that brown stuff is the really good tasty stuff) but stir it every once in a while so that nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. After a while you’ll notice the mushrooms are starting to shrink and the butter/oil is disappearing. That’s because it’s being absorbed by the mushrooms even as they’re wringing out their own juices turning the liquid into the pan into some kind of wonderful butter, oil, garlic, onion, mushroom tasting mixture. If the pan’s completely dry add a little bit more oil so that things don’t start to burn. But once the mushrooms are shriveled up and the onions are transparent you’re good to go.

At this point you could just put everything on a plate or a bowl and have at it – I know I have – but if you want to really get the flavor’s hopping add the white wine (red will work too but I prefer something crisp and clear and less fruity than most red’s I’ve had). Scrape the bottom of the pan because all the brown gooey goodness you’ve made down there will be freed up by the rapidly bubbling away wine. Sprinkle the flour onto the mushrooms so the sauce you’re making will thicken a bit. Then add the stock a little bit at a time. Waiting until it’s mostly boiled away as well before you add more. Keep on doing so and taste a bit of the mixture as you’re going along until you’re satisfied that everything’s good and the mushrooms are done to perfection. That’s when they’re tender and bursting with flavor yet you can still cut them with the edge your spatula, say, as if they were made of butter and there’s a thick, viscous sauce that’s clinging to them. You might or might not use up all the stock. If you do, then you can add more or some water – just do so a little at a time until there’s little left in the pan. If you don’t then, well, save it somehow.

It takes a little bit of time on the clock (maybe 20~45 minutes) but it’s a very simple recipe as once you chop everything up you can just leave it cooking while you busy yourself with everything else. Put it on top of steaks, add more stock or other liquid and thicken it somehow if you want a sauce, serve it as a side, use it as a stuffing, it’s got a lot of possibilities. So, like I said, when I don’t know what I’m doing it’s a good thing to pull out of the cookbook because I can use it with so many other things. And since it’s so simple I don’t have to spend much time thinking about it. For me, that’s a quick dish.