Sausage Stuffed Baby Bella Mushrooms

These sausage stuffed mushrooms are literally the easiest appetizer ever. Wipe the mushrooms off with a damp paper towel or mushroom brush, add your favorite sausage and bake for 14 minutes…that’s it! You can stuff the mushroom caps with chicken sausage, or pork sausage, really any kind you like as long as it can be taken out of the casing it comes in as shown in the pictures below. In this recipe I used Italian sausage and a D’Artagnan sausage that consists of a mix of pork, duck, duck liver and egg white which is out of this world… meaty and very flavorful yet mild… just delicious! I really like D’Artagnan products and you can buy them at Bishops Orchards Market in Guilford, CT. This brand carries a lot of duck products which Bishops carries and anything with duck or goose whether it be breast or liver is a no brainer in my book…YUM! You can have these stuffed mushrooms for hors’ d oeurves before serving stuffed roulades of chicken on a garlic-bean purée, Asian shrimp & rice noodle salad, turkey stuffed peppers or Chilean sea bass with green goddess sauce II for dinner.

Ingredients – Makes 15-17 Stuffed Mushrooms:

2 pkgs of baby bella mushrooms (there will be about 7 or 8 per pkg)
1 or 2 varieties of your favorite sausage
Sprinkle of salt – (for after the mushrooms come out of the oven)
Fresh grated Reggiano Parmesan

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 400º
Clean your baby Bella mushrooms off with either a damp paper towel or a mushroom brush … you should NEVER wash your mushrooms or submerse them in water because mushrooms are porous.
Pop out the mushroom stems
Drizzle 3 Tbsp olive oil across a cookie sheet and rub it with your hands or use a brush to smear all of the olive oil across the baking sheet
Place all of the baby bella mushroom caps on the olive oil and roll them around lightly coating mushrooms then make sure they are all open side up on cookie tray
Slice open the sausage casings to get the sausage meat out and place on a small dish
Begin to gently fill mushroom caps with approximately 1 1/2 Tbsp of sausage per mushroom (some may be smaller and only need 1 Tbsp)
Do not pack in sausage just lightly stuff mushroom caps
Bake for 12-14 minutes til slightly crispy on the edges
DO NOT SALT the mushrooms before you bake them because all the water will release from the mushrooms and they will steam instead of baking
When you take the mushrooms out of the oven THEN you can sprinkle a little salt
The mushrooms will be juicy when you take them out of the oven so before you place them on a serving dish tilt them a little over the cookie tray that way some of the juice can drain out onto the tray and not on the serving platter
Sprinkle a little Parmesan on the mushrooms and serve