These juicy portobello breakfast sandwiches are made with smoky roasted portobello caps smothered in vegan scallion cashew cream cheese.



In case I’ve never mentioned this before, at one point in my life I worked a bizillion hours a week as a law firm associate. As I’m sure you can imagine, life was rough. One thing I hung on to during that time was lunch. I made sure to eat lunch outside of the office as much as possible. Outside lunches were always a little rushed, but they were something. One of my law firm lunch buddies who I normally ate with had a rule. She wouldn’t order salad. As I said, lunch was normally rushed, and salad took a long time to eat. “It takes too long to chew,” in her words.

Why am I telling you this? Well, sometimes meals that take a long time to chew are a good thing. In fact, these days, I feel like the more effort that goes into actually eating my meal, the better. Which brings me to the one issue concerning these sandwiches. I’ve never, ever, in my life, scarfed a breakfast as fast as this one.

Okay, so I can blame at least part of that on the fact that this might have been one of my all time top-delicious breakfasts. Scarfing happens.

According to my original intention, these portobello breakfast sandwiches might have taken a little longer to scarf. I meant for them to be bagel sandwiches. Bagels require more chewing then English muffins. Everybody knows that.



The reason I went with English muffins has nothing to do with scarcity of bagels or omissions on my part. I simply couldn’t find portobello caps big enough for bagels. Portobellos shrink substantially during cooking, so if you go to make these and you find portobellos with caps about the diameter or a bagel, buy English muffins. If you find some mushrooms that are a bit bigger than bagels (say about 20% more diameter), go for the bagels and let me know how awesome it was and how long it took to chew. I guess you could always go for basic toast, but toast is square and mushrooms are round, so that’s getting really complicated.

Moving on to how amazingly delicious these were. They were amazingly delicious! I don’t really know what I was trying to recreate here. Usually when I do one of these savory liquid smoke type marinades it’s bacon. I’ve seen people make bacon out of little strips of mushrooms, and figured why not just do one big mushroom that fits perfectly into a sandwich. The other thing that’s great about these is that you can start marinating your mushrooms and/or make the cashew cream cheese in advance. I made the cream cheese the day before and started my mushrooms the night before. The next morning all I had to do was pop the portobellos in the oven and toast the muffins.

I’ve been on a bit of a breakfast sandwich kick as of late. If you like the idea of a savory breakfast sandwich, check out my Savory Tempeh Breakfast Sandwiches.

Print Smoky Portobello Breakfast Sandwiches with Cashew Cream Cheese These juicy portobello breakfast sandwiches are made with smoky roasted portobello caps smothered in vegan scallion cashew cream cheese. Prep Time 10 minutes Cook Time 20 minutes Total Time 30 minutes Servings 2 Author Alissa Ingredients 2 large portobello caps

2 tbsp. apple cider vinegar

1 tbsp. maple syrup

1 tbsp. soy sauce

1/2 tbsp. olive oil

3/4 tsp. liquid smoke

1/2 batch vegan cashew cream cheese could sub commercial vegan cream cheese

2 scallions

2 bagels sliced or English muffins, split, toasted

1/4 cup fresh arugula or baby spinach Instructions Clean portobellos. Remove stems and scrape out gills with a spoon. Whisk together apple cider vinegar, maple syrup, soy sauce, olive oil and liquid smoke. Place portobello caps in container with smoke marinade and toss to coat or gently spoon marinade over caps. Marinate at least 30 minutes at room temperature, or overnight in the refrigerator. Preheat oven to 400º. Place portobello caps on baking sheet and bake until tender, 10 minutes on each side, spooning a bit of extra marinade over caps about half way through cooking. Reserve any remaining marinade. Stir cream cheese and scallions together in a small bowl and slather on both halves of bagels or muffins. Slather each half of bagels or muffins with cream cheese. Stuff each with a portobello cap topped with arugula or spinach. Drizzle greens with a bit of reserved marinade. Recipe Notes Prep time does not include marinating.

Check the ingredients on your English muffins - lots of popular brands aren't vegan. For vegan muffins, try Trader Joe's.

Obviously, as portobello caps are pretty big, you're not going to be able to submerge them in the marinade. Don't worry about that. If you have a chance, spoon a bit of the liquid over top of them from time to time, or marinade in a sealed container and give a gentle shake.

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