Recipe for Grilled Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Sausage, Spinach, and Cheese

These Grilled Portobello Mushrooms are stuffed with sausage, spinach, and cheese, but you could easily make this a vegetarian recipe as well.

(For Phase One Fridays I highlight Phase One recipes from the past that have been my personal favorites, and since it's finally grilling weather again, how about making these Grilled Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Sausage, Spinach, and Cheese over the weekend?)
 
Portobello mushrooms are something I haven't cooked with nearly often enough, and they're a wonderfully healthy ingredient, particularly popular with people who are looking for something besides meat to cook on the grill. This isn't a vegetarian recipe since the mushrooms are stuffed with spicy Italian sausage, but I think the idea could easily be adapted to a vegetarian stuffed mushroom, maybe even replacing the sausage with diced portobellos.

The idea for stuffing grilled portobello mushrooms with sausage came from Bobby Flay's Grill It.  I'm a fan of Bobby Flay and I like the creative grilling ideas in this book, but on this recipe, there are confusing directions and omissions which should have been caught in editing. Maybe it's just the school teacher in me that makes me mention it, because overall I love the book, which already has lots of pages flagged with post-its, and this recipe was really delicious.

Start by cooking pork or turkey Italian Sausage until it's well browned. Remove sausage, saute chopped onion, then mix sausage back into the onions.

Add tomato sauce (original recipe used red wine) and red pepper flakes to onion/sausage mixture and cook a few minutes while you chop the spinach. Then add chopped spinach, which will look like a lot at first.

After a few minutes the spinach has cooked down and looks like this. Turn off heat and stir in chopped chopped basil and parsley.

The book didn't mention removing the brown gills inside the portabella mushrooms, but I scraped them out with a spoon (partly to give more room for the stuffing!) Then brush both sides of the mushrooms with olive oil, put mushrooms on the grill inside facing down and cook about 4 minutes before you stuff them.

Bobby Flay's version of this used fresh mozarella with tomatoes on top, and it looks delicious. There are no garden tomatoes here yet, and I substituted grated mozarella which is a bit more widely available. The stuffed mushrooms cook on the grill for about 5 minutes, or until cheese is melted and starting to brown, mushroom is cooked through, and stuffing is hot.


Grilled Portobello Mushrooms Stuffed with Sausage, Spinach, and Cheese
(Makes 4 large stuffed mushrooms, recipe adapted from Bobby Flay's Grill It.)

Ingredients:
4 large Portobello mushrooms (get the biggest ones you can find)
12 oz. mild or hot Italian sausage (use turkey Italian sausage for South Beach Diet)
1-2 T olive oil (for browning sausage and onions and brushing on mushrooms before grilling)
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 tsp. minced fresh garlic (or use chopped garlic from a jar)
1/2 cup tomato sauce (I used garden tomato sauce from my freezer. If you open a can, just freeze the rest.)
pinch red pepper flakes (optional)
8 oz. coarsely chopped spinach leaves
2 T chopped fresh basil (probably optional, but recommended)
2 T chopped fresh parsley (probably optional, but recommended)
1/2 cup grated mozzarella, plus 1/2 cup for sprinkling on top (I used low-fat mozzarella)

Instructions:
Preheat gas or charcoal grill to high heat. Heat a small amount of olive oil in heavy frying pan, then crumble Italian sausage into pan and cook about 5 minutes, breaking apart with back of the turner as it cooks. When sausage is well-browned, remove to bowl.

If needed, add a bit more olive oil, then saute onions until they're starting to soften, about 2 minutes. Add garlic and continue cooking until onions are starting to brown, a few minutes more. Add Italian sausage back into pan, then add red pepper flakes and tomato sauce and simmer 2-3 minutes while you chop the spinach.

Add chopped spinach and let it wilt and cook down, stirring so it's evenly distributed in the sausage/onion mixture. Turn off heat and stir in 1/2 cup mozzarella, chopped basil and parsley.

Remove stems from mushrooms caps, being careful not to break them. Scrape out brown gills from inside mushrooms if desired, then brush both sides of mushrooms with olive oil. Put mushrooms on grill, inside facing down, and cook about 4 minutes, until mushroom is slightly browned and starting to soften.

Remove mushrooms from the grill. (I put them on a wooden cutting board.) Carefully stuff the inside of each mushroom with sausage/spinach/cheese mixture, then top each mushroom with about 2 T grated mozzarella.

Carefully put mushrooms back on grill, stuffing facing up of course! Cover grill and cook about 5 minutes, checking often and removing from grill when mushrooms are cooked through, and cheese is melted and starting to brown, and stuffing mixture is hot. Serve immediately.

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South Beach Suggestions:

I changed the red wine in this recipe for tomato sauce to make it suitable for any phase of the South Beach Diet, and ate this as a main course with a simple green salad. Everything in this recipe is a low-glycemic food, suitable for any low-glycemic eating plan.

Nutritional Information?
I chose the South Beach Diet to manage my weight partly so I wouldn't have to count calories, carbs, points, or fat grams, but if you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into Calorie Count, which will calculate it for you. 

More Mushrooms on the Grill
(Recipes from other blogs may not always be South Beach Diet friendly; check ingredients.)
Easy South Beach Friendly Grilled Mushrooms
Grilled Portobello Mushrooms from A Veggie Venture
Grilled Portobello Caps from The Well Seasoned Cook
Ideas for Grilled Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms from Ramblings of a Frantic Home Cook
Grilled Mushrooms with Pesto from Coffee and Vanilla
Grilled Mushroom Caps with Pesto and Pepper Filling from Deb's Key West Wine and Gardening
Grilled Enoki Mushrooms Wrapped with Smoked Chicken Breast from Rasa Malaysia
Grilled Stuff Portobello Mushrooms from Fearless Kitchen
Grilled Portobello Mushroom Burger (video) from Dani Spies
Grilled Portobellos with Garlic, Pine Nuts, Basil, and Goat Cheese from Al Dente
(Want even more recipes?  I find these recipes from other blogs using Food Blog Search.)

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This cookbook was sent to me by the publisher back in 2008 (when I still accepted books), but I never write about a cookbook unless I would actually buy it myself.