Roasted Mushrooms with Garlic

When life gives you lots of meaty mushrooms, you could do worse than make roasted mushrooms with garlic, rosemary or some other herb. What follows is a tutorial on how to roast mushrooms of any kind.

As you can see, these are roasted porcini mushrooms, but roasted mushrooms with garlic works with a wide variety of mushroom species. Some good ones include:

• Portobellos, which are large button mushrooms.
• Cremini and regular button mushrooms, which are the same thing; one is grown in darkness to keep it white. Oh, and you do not need to peel either portobello or button mushrooms.
• Maitake, which is what you will see in the store, or hen of the woods is what we call them here in the U.S.
• Chicken of the woods, which you can’t buy, but which are very common nationwide.
• Large shiitake mushrooms, caps only. Save the stems for mushroom stock.
• Any other edible bolete, such as butter boletes and many of the leccinums.
• King trumpet mushrooms or larger hedgehogs, Hydnum repandum, which can get big.
• Lobster mushrooms or big Western chanterelles, which can also grow larger than your palm.

I’m betting most of you will be using store-bought button or cremini mushrooms, and this is fine.

There is not a lot to making roasted mushrooms with garlic and herbs. You clean the mushrooms (in most cases just with a damp towel), coat them in oil or melted butter, toss with minced garlic or garlic powder and roast on a baking sheet until done.

You roast mushrooms hot, so you drive off excess moisture so you get a meaty roast mushroom, not a flabby one. How long is a bit of voodoo.

The reason is because it depends on how wet your mushrooms were in the first place, are they in one layer and what kind they are. None of this is so radically different from species to species to warrant their own recipes, so here’s a ballpark guide:

• Portobellos and porcini and large hedgehogs should need about 40 to 45 minutes.
• Regular cremini or button mushrooms, lobster mushrooms and the Western chanterelles take about 30 to 35 minutes.
• Maitake have thinner bits to them, which will crisp up, so watch them after 25 minutes. I like the crispy edges, though.
• Chicken of the woods range all over the place, but never less than 20 minutes. I’ve had soggy young ones take 45 minutes.

What you are looking for is firm, with a little browning.

I choose to toss the roasted mushrooms with black pepper and whatever herb I am using at the end, so the herbs don’t burn up in the oven. I prefer fresh rosemary, which really likes mushrooms, but fresh thyme, sage, or parsley are also good choices.

If you have leftovers, roasted mushrooms with garlic is very good at room temperature the next day, and can be frozen.

Looking for more mushroom recipes? Try my grilled mushrooms, squash gnocchi with mushrooms or Chinese braised mushrooms. All are good side dishes.