Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe with Fragrant Herbs and Parmigiano Reggiano

Our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe makes the most delicious mushrooms sautéed with garlic and shallots in salted butter and olive oil, and finished with a dollop of sour cream and plenty of fresh fragrant herbs. I love aromatic dill but you can use flat-leaf parsley, coriander, or your favourite herb. Pile it all onto toasted sourdough and generously sprinkle on some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

This perfect mushrooms on toast recipe draws from the best of my favourite sautéed mushrooms dishes: baba’s mushrooms with sour cream and fresh dill, a fantastic accompaniment to classic Russian dishes such as chicken Kiev and kotleti; dad’s garlic mushrooms that he’d do on the barbecue with leftover sausages and onions for late Sunday breakfasts; and the herbed mushrooms that with avocado toast were such a big part of Sydney café breakfasts in the late 1980s and ’90s.

Mushrooms, sour cream and dill. Obviously, my Russian-Ukrainian heritage is showing. But while these ingredients might be quintessentially Eastern European – sautéed mushrooms in sour cream with dill often featured on my baboushka’s dining table – they also made an appearance on breakfast plates on holidays, whether at home or on caravanning and camping trips when dad would fry up garlic mushrooms alongside sausages, onions and tomatoes on the barbecue or camp fire.

While those were my fondest mushroom-eating memories growing up, as a uni student in the mid-late 80s who waitressed at inner-city Sydney cafés after class and on weekends, I recall that every breakfast plate I delivered to tables featured herbed mushrooms on the side or spilling from fat focaccia sandwiches filled with roasted red capsicums, eggplants and artichokes that had me drooling just as much as the fatty bacon.

But before I tell you about our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe with fragrant dill on sourdough, I have a favour to ask. Grantourismo is reader supported. If you’ve enjoyed our recipes, please consider supporting Grantourismo by buying a handcrafted KROK, the best mortar and pestle ever; booking a cooking class or meal with locals on EatWith; or by buying something on Amazon, such as these cookbooks for culinary travellers or classic cookbooks for serious cooks.

And if you don’t find cooking inspo in this post, do browse our recipe archives, which are brimming with 15 years of recipes we’ve cooked, created and collected around the world, from places we’ve lived, worked, travelled, and loved. Now let me tell you a little about this perfect mushrooms on toast recipe.

Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe with Fresh Fragrant Herbs and Parmigiano Reggiano

Wild mushrooms are wonderful for our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe, if you know a thing or two about foraging or have access to a mushroom specialist, such as the Mushroom Man in Melbourne. Otherwise, buy a mix of whatever mushrooms are in season from your nearest market or supermarket.

Wild mushrooms are foraged here in the forests in Cambodia, while families in villages farm oyster mushrooms to bring in additional income. However, we don’t see fresh mushrooms much in local markets (it’s mainly dried mushrooms from China), so we don’t eat anywhere near as many mushrooms as I’d like.

Supermarkets in Cambodia mainly stock mushrooms from Vietnam and China which reek of the plastic that they’re packaged in. So when I do spot some nice fresh mushrooms as I did this week, I snap them up to make my perfect mushrooms on toast and as many other mushroom dishes as I can.

For my perfect mushrooms on toast, a mix of mushrooms is wonderful – any combination of button mushrooms, cremini, portobello, oyster mushrooms, shiitake, enoki, porcini, chanterelles etc – as much for the variety of flavours and textures as for the look of the dish.

A mix of mushrooms will pile up better in a big beautiful jumble of mushrooms and herbs. One type of mushroom becomes a bit monotonous after you’ve chewed into a few. Two types of mushrooms are better, but three or even four types of mushrooms are so much more fun. Just a few tips to making perfect mushrooms on toast.

Tips to Making this Mushrooms on Toast Recipe

I only have a few tips to making my perfect mushrooms on toast recipe, as this is a super easy recipe. It’s all about the mushrooms obviously, but the toast is important too and you should do that first, so let’s start there.

Start with the Toast

I’d love to say that only sourdough toast will do for perfect mushrooms on toast. But I appreciate that not everyone is as lucky as I am to have a resident sourdough baker. I also appreciate that a loaf of sourdough might cost you $10 at an artisanal bakery and who isn’t living in a country that’s in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis?

(If you haven’t yet tried your hand at making sourdough, I strongly recommend that you do and we have an excellent compilation of Terence’s best sourdough recipes and tips that form this ultimate guide to sourdough baking. Not convinced? Read why Terence finds baking sourdough so satisfying here.)

Use a griddle pan to toast thick slices of sourdough bread or whatever your favourite loaf of bread you buy or bake. A griddle pan will give you those lovely black griddle marks as much as a little smokiness.

Then use a silicon pastry brush or fibre pastry brush to brush some good quality extra virgin olive oil on the slices, or generously spread butter on the toast if you prefer. Slice each piece in half, then set them aside on serving plates. You could pop them in the oven on low to keep them warm.

Preparing the Mushrooms

If you’ve not picked or grown your own mushrooms and the mushrooms have dirt on them, then your first inclination might be to wash them. Don’t. Avoid washing mushrooms if you can.

Mushrooms are like sponges and soak everything up – which is what we love about them in the right kind of dish, such as a braise or stew, as they absorb the olive oil, butter, seasonings, sauces, and wine so well. You definitely don’t want to sit the mushrooms in water in the kitchen sink to clean them as you might other vegetables.

If you’ve got organic mushrooms or you know where and what the mushrooms have grown in, then simply dust off any dirt with a clean kitchen cloth or paper kitchen towel. If the dirt is not budging, dampen the cloth with a little water and wipe away the dirt.

If you don’t know the source of the mushrooms, then, just before you’re about to throw them in the pan, you could wash them quickly under running water, immediately pat them dry with a clean kitchen towel, and get them in that pan as fast as you can.

Cooking the Mushrooms

When it comes to cooking the mushrooms, for perfect mushrooms on toast use the best quality butter and virgin olive oil you can afford. Again, because mushrooms are like sponges, so you want them soaking up deliciousness.

Use a fry pan, skillet or even a wok to fry the finely chopped shallots or onions in the virgin olive oil on low heat until soft, then add the finely chopped garlic and fry until the shallots or onions are almost translucent. It’s super-important not to over-cook them as they’ll continue to cook and will brown as the mushrooms are cooking.

If you’re a garlic lover, as I am, by all means add more cloves, however, keep in mind that you don’t want the garlic to overpower the flavours of all those mushrooms.

Turn the heat up to medium, then add the rest of the olive oil and butter, along with the mushrooms. When sautéing the mushrooms, you’ll need to stir them continuously so that they’re entirely covered in olive oil and butter, and the shallots and garlic are evenly distributed, so they’re evenly absorbing those flavours.

But do stir gently, as you don’t want to damage the mushrooms and don’t want the stalks to break off. Some cooks like to slice their mushrooms, others like to chop them into bite-size cubes so they’re uniform (boring), but I like to keep small and medium sized mushrooms whole and only slice large mushrooms so they all cook at pretty much the same time.

For the most perfect mushrooms on toast, big mushrooms are wonderful whole if you can leave a few intact, as they retain their juiciness. One of the best meals of our lives was a massive single whole roasted mushroom at La Tavernetta in Camigliatello Silano in Calabria, Southern Italy. As we cut into this enormous wild mushroom, juices gushed out of it and formed a pool on the plate. It was a revelation.

If you want to keep your big mushrooms whole, by all means do that, but toss them in the pan first, then after a minute or two, add the medium sized mushrooms and after another minute or so, add your small mushrooms.

Adding Sour Cream and Fresh Dill

Wait until just before the mushrooms are done – you want the mushrooms brown and soft and floppy – to spoon in a dollop of sour cream and a couple of heaped tablespoons of roughly chopped fresh dill.

Alternatively, you could use crème fraiche or a tablespoon of cooking cream (or you could skip the cream entirely) and any fresh fragrant herb of your choice. Flat leaf parsley works. As does coriander for a Southeast Asian flavour.

Garnishing and Serving

Sprinkle on a pinch of sea salt and some cracked black pepper to your taste, then quickly combine everything with a stir or three, and pile it all on top of the warm toasted sourdough.

If you love fresh herbs as much as we do, then garnish with some more chopped herbs (skip them if you don’t), and generously sprinkle with grated Parmigiano Reggiano or Pecorino Romano cheese, and serve immediately.

Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe

Mushrooms on Toast Recipe with Fresh Herbs on Sourdough

AuthorLara Dunston

Our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe makes mushrooms sautéed with garlic and shallots in salted butter and olive oil, combined with a dollop of sour cream and plenty of fresh fragrant herbs – in this case aromatic dill; you could also use flat-leaf parsley, fresh coriander or any perfumed herb of your choice – piled onto toasted sourdough bread, and generously sprinkled with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.

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Prep Time 15 minutes mins

Cook Time 10 minutes mins

Course Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Snack

Cuisine British/Australian, European, Russian

Servings made with recipeServings 2 People

Calories 562 kcal

Equipment

10 Inch Hybrid Nonstick Frying Pan

Ingredients

 

MetricUS Customary

 

1x2x3x

• 2 slices sourdough bread - thickly sliced
• 3 tbsp olive oil - divided, best quality you can afford
• 2 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 shallot - finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove - finely chopped
• 400 g mushrooms - mixed, whatever is in season
• 1 tbsp sour cream - optional
• sea salt and cracked black pepper - to your taste

Garnish

• 2 tbsp fresh dill or flat-leaf parsley - roughly chopped
• grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Instructions

 

• Toast your sourdough bread, brush on some quality extra virgin olive oil or generously spread with quality butter, slice each piece in half, then set aside on the serving plates.
• In a large frying pan or skillet over low heat, pour in a tablespoon of olive oil and heat, and fry the finely chopped shallot and garlic just until the shallot is soft and garlic is fragrant. Take care not to over-cook the shallot and garlic as you don't want them to burn while the mushrooms are cooking.
• To the pan, add the rest of the olive oil and butter, increase the heat to medium, and add the mushrooms to the pan. Note: you don't want to crowd the mushrooms in the pan, so if you don't have a large pan, you can cook the mushrooms in batches. If using a mix of sizes, add the large mushrooms first, then the medium mushrooms, and small mushrooms.
• Sauté the mushrooms: at first, use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir the mushrooms continuously but gently, so that they're covered in olive oil and butter, the shallots and garlic are evenly distributed, and the mushrooms evenly cook.
• Once the mushrooms are fully coated and shallots and garlic evenly distributed, stir the mushrooms occasionally, allowing them to rest a little so the juices are released, the mushrooms soften, and they start to brown in places.
• After a few minutes, or whenever the mushrooms are soft and brown, add a dollop of sour cream, 2 tablespoons of fresh dill (or other fragrant herb of your choice), a pinch of sea salt and freshly ground cracked black pepper to your taste. Stir to combine well.
• Tip the mushrooms out of the pan and pile them onto the toasted sourdough, evenly distributing between plates.
• Garnish with more fresh herbs and generously sprinkle with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve immediately.

Notes

1. Use the best quality extra virgin olive oil and butter you can afford, as the mushrooms soak the flavours right up.
2. Take care not to over-cook the shallot and garlic as you don't want them to burn while the mushrooms are cooking.
3. Don't crowd the mushrooms in the pan, as they'll sweat too much and won't brown, so if you don't have a large pan, cook the mushrooms in batches.
4. If using a mix of sizes, add the large mushrooms first, then the medium mushrooms, and small mushrooms.
5. After plating, serve immediately; they're at their most delicious when hot.

Nutrition

Calories: 562kcalCarbohydrates: 53gProtein: 13gFat: 36gSaturated Fat: 11gPolyunsaturated Fat: 3gMonounsaturated Fat: 19gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 33mgSodium: 454mgPotassium: 753mgFiber: 7gSugar: 8gVitamin A: 419IUVitamin C: 2mgCalcium: 51mgIron: 3mg

Please do let us know in the comments below if you make our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe, as we’d love to know how the dish turns out for you.