Mushroom 20 minutes Vegetarian

Sautéed mushrooms

Name: Sautéed mushrooms
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 12 min
Total time: 22 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: International
Ingredients: 500 g Button mushrooms; 30 g Butter; 1 tbsp Olive oil; 3 cloves Garlic; 1 tsp Thyme; 15 g Parsley; 2 g Black pepper; 5 g Salt

Mushrooms are wiped, not washed. And the salt goes in last: early salt draws their water out and makes browning impossible.

Vegetable dishes · International · Under 30 minutes · One pot · Vegan

22 minTime

120Kcal / serving

481Total kcal

Preparation: 10 min
Cooking: 12 min
Difficulty: Easy
Cost: Cheap
Season: Autumn, Winter

Where this dish comes from

A mushroom takes up water like a sponge — washed, it can gain 10% of its weight, and that water is the first thing to come out in the pan. Salt does the same by osmosis. Either way the pan locks at 100 °C and the Maillard reaction that produces the umami never begins. A mushroom tastes of something when it browns, not when it boils.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Do NOT wash the mushrooms: wipe them with a damp cloth and slice them thick.
Heat the pan empty for two minutes.

You will need: A wide pan · A damp cloth

Heat the pan hard, add the fats and lay the mushrooms in a SINGLE layer with no salt; leave them ALONE for six minutes.

Look for The water comes out first and the pan goes quiet; when it has gone the sizzle returns and the real browning starts only then.

Why Mushrooms are 92% water and in a single layer that water can leave. Stirring keeps breaking the contact between the surface and the hot metal, and the browning restarts each time.

If it went wrong

If they have stewed, raise the heat, drive the water off completely and brown them three minutes more. Nothing browns while there is water in the pan.

Frying dynamics Surface water is flashing to steam and pushing outward — that is the shield keeping the oil out. no way back
Turn them and brown four minutes more, then add the garlic and thyme for one.

Look for The mushrooms deep gold and shrunken, and the garlic only releasing its smell.

Why Garlic goes in last because more than five minutes turns it bitter, and at that point the mushrooms have not finished browning.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

Frying dynamics Surface water is flashing to steam and pushing outward — that is the shield keeping the oil out. no way back
Add the salt, pepper and parsley after the pan comes off the heat.

Look for No liquid should gather in the pan.

Why Salt draws out whatever water is left; added at the end that water never reaches the pan, and the mushrooms keep the browning they earned.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

Salt · 0.86% Right in the window. Flavours sharpen, bitterness retreats, water is held.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 195 °C · 12 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

4

Ingredients

500 g Button mushrooms
30 g Butter
1 tbsp Olive oil
3 cloves Garlic
1 tsp Thyme
15 g Parsley
2 g Black pepper
5 g Salt

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

We hold no safety rule for this group that a dish could break — training, or an age, does not make food dangerous. The thresholds below are about the person rather than about the dish.

Not about the dish — about the person

Protein in a day

0.83 g/kg

An adult Context established

Per day, 0.83 g for every kilogram of body weight — about 58 g a day for somebody of 70 kg. This is a floor: the amount that prevents a shortfall, not an optimum.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

What is done, and what is not: There is no calorie target here: daily energy need depends on age, body composition and training volume, and a figure written without them is a guess that looks certain. The protein calculation is offered because it rests on a sourced range and a single input. Supplements, and rapid weight cutting in weight-class sports, are conversations to have with a professional.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable as it is
Vegan Suitable with a substitution Butter Instead: Butter → Olive oil / Tahini
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
Diabetes-friendly It depends

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

What a swap costs

Butter → Olive oil No reaction in this recipe is lost. +12 kcal · +1.4 g fat · +0.0 g protein
Butter → Tahini No reaction in this recipe is lost. -9 kcal · -2.1 g fat · +1.2 g protein

Computed weight for weight. A ratio per pair would be better, and there is no sourced table of them, so the assumption is stated rather than hidden.

Calculated nutrition

120.3 kcal
4.4 g Protein
6.1 g Carbohydrate
10 g Fat
1.7 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

After the heat goes off

Serving

Hot, on fried bread or beside meat and chicken.

Keeping · 3 days

Three days in the fridge.

Cooling and reheating

Two minutes in a hot pan.

Freezes

Two months. Browned mushrooms freeze well because most of their water has already gone.

What is left

Into pasta, an omelette, rice or soup.

For a child

Mushroom texture is unfamiliar to some children, and finely sliced and well browned it is more acceptable. For 12–36 months cut the slices very small and lift their share before the salt. Mushrooms suit a baby from eight months, well cooked and mashed.

If you have not got it

Butter → Olive oil Olive oil alone works and makes it vegan; what goes is the nutty note the butter brings.

Where to go from here

Deep frying The method this recipe rests on
White button mushroom What it does in heat, water and acid
Butter What it does in heat, water and acid
Garlic What it does in heat, water and acid
Mushroom soup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Beef sauté Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Tray-roasted vegetables Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need
One pot Other recipes that answer the same need
Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: aroma 77, richness 51, umami 45.

Sweet 9
Salty 8
Sour 6
Bitter 22
Umami 45
Heat 9
Richness 51
Aroma 77

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity