Oyster Mushroom Cream Sauce Pasta W/ Lardon

The secret to cooking and incorporating mushrooms into your culinary arsenal is to understand how to properly prepare and cook Mushrooms. Mushrooms tend to retain a lot of water and can quickly make your dish a soggy mess. To prevent this from happening we always want to gently wash the Mushroom to remove any debris and then quickly pat dry the mushrooms so they don’t absorb the water. Mushrooms are 92% water and adding any additional water will hinder flavor, texture, and profile of your dish. You got to get as much moisture out of the Mushroom before adding any Oil or Fats.

Ingredients:

1. Oyster Mushrooms or Your favorite Mushroom

2. Pasta (Any pasta works)

3. Butter

4. Cream or Milk

5. Lardon (Thick Bacon or just normal bacon)

6. Salt and Pepper

7. Some Fancy Pancy Garnish (Cilantro, Thyme or parsley)

8. All purpose flour

9. Onion

Additional Optional Ingredients:

1. Garlic

2. Thyme, Oregano, Italian, etc

3. Peppers (Add Spice as you like)

Chef it up

I like to eye ball everything, so there are no measurements. Portion appropriately! and cook to your own preference. If you like it more buttery add more butter or more cream. Just aim for a consistent Pasta Rue sauce. Okay Lets begin!

Steps

1. Prepare all your Ingredients

2. Cook Pasta to Al Dente, strain, brush with olive oil and set aside.

3. Get your Pan really hot and add mushrooms - do not add too much Mushrooms as it will cause them to steam rather than sauté.

4. Pinch of Salt and Pepper

5. Add Finely Diced Onions

6. Add Lardon/Bacon when the Mushrooms shrink (Right before they brown)

7. Sauté Onions, Lardon/Bacon, and Mushrooms till brown (Flavor Town!)

8. Splash of White Wine

9. Touch of Cream

10. Nice Knob of butter to finish

11. Thicken sauce if you want with a little bit of flour.

12. Toss sauce with Pasta

13. Plate and garnish with fancy pancy ingredients

14. Serve and Enjoy!

Mental Cooking Notes:

Get all that water out before you can add any fat. Cook Mushrooms without any oil or butter until they start to stick and they've reabsorbed all the water that came out. If you add oil/butter before you get them dried out, they will soak it up and become eternally wet and slimy. Mushrooms can absorb up to 50% of their weight in oil, but if you dry them out first, they only soak up about 5% of their mass worth of oil.

Once you've got them dried out, add your oil/butter, and cook until they start to brown. If you're adding onions (and you should), this is the time to add them. Deglaze with some vinegar or white wine. If you want your mushrooms to taste good and come through in the dish, you need a little bit of acid. On that note, I know this sounds basic, but make sure you add salt while you're cooking the mushrooms, not just to the finished meal. Mushrooms, to me, really soak up a lot of salt and they'll be dull in the dish if they don't have the salt they need on their own.

Enjoy!