Mushrooms stuffed with Feta, Bacon and Spinach

When I was younger I used to make mushrooms with melted cheese on the stove with my dad. I haven’t made it in years but I recently came across this much healthier recipe which brought back those fond memories.

This recipe is so full of flavour and has a good amount of salt in it. The mushrooms are bursting with flavour and are incredibly juicy and are bite sized – well depending on the size of the mushrooms you use. I prefer the big mushrooms, but that only means that you eat it in two bites instead of one.

Makes 8 big mushrooms

Ingredients

8 big mushroom cups (probably 16 – 20 small mushroom cups)
4 slices bacon (chopped)
1 tbsp butter
3 cups fresh baby spinach (you can also use frozen but use 2 cups instead)
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tbsp almond flour
1/6 cup feta crumbled
salt and pepper to taste

Method

Step 1: Preheat oven to 190°C fan forced/ 375°F and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Step 2: Cook the bacon in strips in a saucepan. Once the bacon is cooked, then chop it into smaller pieces – I find it is much easier to do it this way rather than chopping it into smaller pieces before cooking. Once chopped, place the bacon in a small bowl to the side. *Note I find it best to use the same saucepan in Step 2 so the bacon flavour can be infused and it also means less cleaning up.

Step 3: Add the spinach, butter, nutmeg (1/2 tsp) and almond flour (1/2 tbsp) to the saucepan, and allow to cook until the spinach has wilted (approx. 2 minutes). Season with salt and pepper and remove from the saucepan and place in a small bowl to the side.

Step 4: In a separate bowl crumble the feta.

Step 5: Lay the eight mushrooms out on the prepared baking tray, cut off the stems of the mushrooms, and fill with all the prepared ingredients (spinach mixture, bacon and feta).

Step 6: Place the baking tray in the oven for approx. 15 minutes or until the mushrooms are lightly browned/tender. Note* you will need a shorter period of time if you are using small mushrooms.

Step 7: Take mushrooms out of the oven and serve hot.

Alternatively you can grill the mushrooms on a medium heat for 6 – 8 minutes.

Step 2: Cook bacon in a pan.

Step 5: Line the mushrooms on the baking tray.

Step 6: Fill the mushrooms with the spinach mixture first.

Step : Fill mushrooms will all the prepared ingredients.

Step 6: Fill mushrooms will all the prepared ingredients.

These tasted really juicy with a strong mushroom flavour with a hint of nutmeg.

Big or small mushrooms?

The mushrooms are very filling, particularly the larger ones, in fact the original recipe used the baby mushrooms but I thought that it would be too fiddly to use the baby mushrooms. If you are using the mushrooms as finger food it would probably be easier to use the baby mushrooms as people could just pop them straight into their mouths without worrying about any of the juices getting on their hands.

If you are serving them at dinner or just for yourself go the big mushrooms. I reckon they look better and I’ve always felt the bigger mushrooms were always much more fancy.

Nut allergy?

If you have a nut allergy you can omit using the almond flour. The purpose of using it, is that it soaks up some of the juices.

Enjoy these they are so soo tasty! You can easily switch out the ingredients for other flavours if you want, but I definitely recommend trying it this way first unless you aren’t a fan of any of the ingredients!