Stuffed Portobellos

This past Saturday, after a great run in the cold and pouring rain, I could just not warm up. The solution, as always, a hot bubble bath and then some quality time spent in the kitchen. While doing the week’s shopping at Trader Joe’s I came up with a recipe for an easy stuffed Portobello mushroom. I couldn’t wait to get into the kitchen to get started.

Smuckers loves Foodbuzz too! The starring ingredients of this easy dish: 2 large Portobello mushrooms, cleaned 1/2 cup panko breadcrumbs 1 teaspoon garlic powder (or fresh garlic, I was too lazy to be honest) 2 Italian chicken sausages (I used Trader Joe’s spicy Italian chicken, but you could use anything from plain sausage to tempeh to tofu)
Kerrygold  Dubliner cheese with Irish stout, shaved in thin slices   

I would say the hardest part of this recipe is removing the gills from the mushrooms. They gross me out so. Once that is done, I brushed them with olive oil and popped them in the oven at 375 to get some of the rawness out of them. While they baked, I chopped the sausage and combined it with garlic powder, breadcrumbs, and enough olive oil to make everything sort of bind together. I also used a paring knife to cut thin shavings of the Kerrygold cheese, which, by the way, is total cheesy  bliss. After about 10 minutes, I took the mushrooms out, stuffed them, and put them back into the oven for about 10 minutes, topped with cheese. In the last minute, I put the broiler on, and the cheese melted down over the tops.


So. . . I am just getting used to using the hubs’ fancy Olympus camera, and I wanted to know from you all. . . which photos are better, the ones on top with flash or the ones without? Apparently using flash is a sin in photography/blogger universe, but I personally think the quality of the top ones is better. I would love to know your thoughts so that I can get better at this photog thing and maybe someday have some top 9 photos!