I really, really like stuffed mushrooms. So I make them once a year.  Any more than that and I’d go broke buying mushrooms and cheese.

You can make stuffed mushrooms with what you have on hand usually as long as you have those two main ingredients.

When you break off the stems of the mushrooms, save them and chop them up to use in your stuffing. If you buy mushroom caps without stems, don’t worry, you can still make a delicious stuffing for them without the stems.

I chop up onions and the stems very finely. Mince. Then I add Italian sausage and top with cheese.

You can use most anything to stuff mushrooms; spinach, clams, bacon, oysters, pepperoni….. just as long as you  mince it so it fits inside the mushroom cap.

You can add the sausage to the mushroom cap without cooking it first. when you do that, it makes for a more compact final product. Its also easier to get everything to stay in the cap while you’re assembling them.

However, you can cook the sausage before assembling too. That’s what I did this time. I cooked the sausage with onions. Brushed the mushroom caps with butter. Added the sausage mixture, covered each mushroom with cheese and then baked them at 350*F for about 15 minutes.

If you use uncooked sausage to stuff the caps, you’ll need to keep them in the oven for about 20 – 25 minutes.