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 or your favourite herb. Pile it all onto toasted sourdough and generously sprinkle on some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano.
My perfect mushrooms on toast recipe takes the best of my favourite sautéed mushrooms dishes – baba’s mushrooms with dill, which are a fantastic accompaniment to classic Russian dishes, such as chicken Kiev and kotleti; my dad’s garlic mushrooms he’d do on the barbecue with leftover sausages and onions for late Sunday breakfasts; and the herbed mushroom sides that were such a big part of Sydney café breakfasts in the 1980s and ’90s.
But before I tell you about our perfect mushrooms on toast recipe with fragrant dill on sourdough, I have a favour to ask. If you’ve cooked any of our recipes on Grantourismo, from my Russian family recipes to our Cambodian recipes, and you’ve enjoyed them, please consider supporting the site and our work here so that we can keep creating delicious recipes and food stories for you.
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Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe with Fresh Fragrant Herbs and Parmigiano Reggiano
Mushrooms, sour cream and dill. Obviously, my Russian is showing. But while these ingredients might be quintessentially Russian and Ukrainian, Slavic and Eastern European – sautéed mushrooms often featured on my baboushka’s big round dining table – they also made an appearance on breakfast plates on holidays, whether at home or on 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 inner-city Sydney in the mid-80s who waitressed at cafés after classes and on weekends, I recall that every breakfast plate that 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.
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 them much in the markets, so we don’t eat anywhere near as many mushrooms as I’d like. Supermarkets mainly stock mushrooms from Vietnam and China which reek of the plastic that they’re packaged in.
So when I do spot some nice mushrooms as I did this week, I snap them up to make my perfect mushrooms on toast recipe. If you do make this recipe, I’d love to know what you think of it and how it turns out for you.
Tips to Making this Mushrooms on Toast Recipe
Just 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.
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 we’re still in a pandemic.
(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 sourdough recipes and tips that form this guide to sourdough baking.)
Use a griddle pan to toast thick slices of sourdough bread or whatever delicious heavy loaf you have at hand, as much for those lovely black griddle marks as the smokiness, then use a silicon pastry brush or fibre pastry brush to brush some virgin olive oil on the slices or generous spreads of salted butter, 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.
Wild mushrooms are wonderful 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.
For perfect mushrooms on toast, mixed mushrooms are essential – 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 pretty 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.
If you’ve not picked or grown your own mushrooms then your first inclination might be to wash them. Avoid washing mushrooms if you can. Mushrooms are like sponges and soak everything up – which is what we love about them, of course, as they absorb butter, olive oil, seasonings, sauces, and wine so well – so 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. If the dirt is not budging, dampen the cloth with 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, wash them quickly under running water, pat them dry immediately with a clean kitchen towel, and get them in that pan as fast as you can.
When it comes to frying, for perfect mushrooms on toast, use the best quality butter and virgin olive oil you can afford. Again, because those 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 over-power 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.
Wait until just before the mushrooms are done – you want them brown and soft – to spoon in a dollop of sour cream and a couple of heaped tablespoons of roughly chopped fresh dill. Now that’s my Russian showing. You could also 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. 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), generously sprinkle with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and serve immediately.
Perfect Mushrooms on Toast Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 thick slices sourdough bread
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp salted butter
- 1 shallot finely chopped
- 1 garlic clove finely chopped
- 400 g mixed mushrooms whatever’s 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 olive oil or generously spread with salted butter, slice each piece in half, then set aside on the serving plates.
- In a frying pan or skillet, fry the finely chopped shallot and garlic on low heat in a tablespoon of olive oil until the shallot is soft and almost translucent, taking care not to over-cook them.
- Turn up the heat, add the rest of the olive oil and butter and mushrooms to the pan, then sauté the mushrooms, stirring them 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. If using a mix of sizes, add the large mushrooms first, then the medium and small mushrooms.
- After a few minutes or whenever the mushrooms are brown and soft, add a dollop of sour cream, 2 tablespoons of fresh dill (or other fragrant herb of your choice), a pinch of sea salt and some cracked black pepper to your taste, combine well, then pile the mushrooms on top of the toasted sourdough.
- Garnish with more fresh herbs and generously sprinkle with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano and serve immediately.
Nutrition
Please do let us know in the comments below or on social media if you make my perfect mushrooms on toast recipe, as we’d love to know how the dish turns out for you.
I made this for my lunch today and it was amazing. My top tip is to make sure you don’t leave out the shallots – they made the dish! I happened to forget the Parmesan (I was too eager to dive in) but the sour cream really added to the flavour. Try it! You won’t be disappointed….
Hi Emma, so pleased you enjoyed this one. Thank you so much for taking the time to drop by and leave a comment.