After watching a video about making mushrooms taste bacon, i decided to try it.

Following the basic instructions in the video, I chopped up 2 containers of shitake mushrooms in to strips (I also removed the stems). Larger mushrooms I cut in to 3 strips, smaller ones I cut in half. In the end, it didn’t seem to matter much what size the pieces were.

Next, I mixed them with a little olive oil and salt, spread them out on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and popped them in my oven — which just happened to be preheated to 350°.

After stirring them with tongs every 10 minutes or so for an hour, it appeared that they were done. But did they taste like bacon? And what was I going to do with them?

The finished product did have a slight bacon taste and was somewhat crunchy to boot. Not a bad substitute for bacon, especially if you are on a diet, a vegetarian, unable to eat bacon due to religion, or you are out of bacon and all the grocery stores near you are closed but you just happened to have a bunch of shitake mushrooms laying around waiting to get eaten.

One thing I need to mention is that after an hour in the oven, the mushrooms had lost quite a lot of mass. One whole container of mushrooms cooked down to about 1 serving.

Now that I had these crispy baconish fungi, I needed to put them to use. Here’s what I did:

Mango, avocado, baconshroom salsa: Dice one small mango (champagne mango) and one small avocado. Add the baconshrooms, some fresh cilantro and squeeze half a lime over the top and mix it all up.

Blood orange balsamic dressing (low calorie): Add the juice from 2 blood orange, about the same amount of balsamic vinegar, 2 or 3 tablespoons of Grey Poupon or other dijon mustard and a pinch of salt to a sealable plastic container. Close the lid tightly and shake for 30 seconds or so until there are no lumps of mustard remaining. If necessary, add a little sugar or splenda to knock down the acidity.

Shrimp: Thaw frozen shrimp :) Yeah, I know, but it’s all I had. Of course grilled fresh shrimp would be much better or, dare i say, pan seared scollops.

Put the wishing-they-were-grilled-but-sadly-they’re-frozen shrimp on a bed of lettuce, add the salsa and dressing, maybe even some some freshly ground pepper and voila! Salad with shrimp, mango-avocado-baconshroom salsa and blood orange balsamic dressing. Yummy!

Enjoy!

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Posted in food/recipes