Friday, May 27, 2011

Role of Mushrooms in vegetarian meals

Even mushrooms play a good role in vegetarian meals. Once you start searching for vegetarian mushroom recipes you will find that there are quite a number of them that carry mushrooms as the main ingredient. This is largely due to the texture of the mushroom and the large variety that are available. Mushrooms are considered as meat replacers in a number of recipes like entrees, stews and stir fry vegetarian dishes. This is because mushrooms have chewy and meat like texture.

Here are three ways you can use mushrooms as a substitute for meat in your vegetarian meals.

mushroom1. Burgers – you can make a healthy and tasty burger using Portobello mushrooms. This can be made in little time since it only requires around 10 minutes from start to finish. All you have to do is get rid of the stem of the mushroom, brush it with some olive oil on both sides then grill for 5 – 7 minutes. To prepare this with more flavors you can allow the mushrooms to sit in your favorite marinade prior to grilling. If you don’t own a grill you can also fry the mushrooms to create a tasty vegetarian meal.

2. Ravioli – you can use white button mushrooms or Portobello mushrooms as the filling for your pasta. Just chop the mushrooms in really fine pieces and then add to the pasta square along with your favorite spices, top it off with another square and seal the edges then boil and serve with your favorite sauce.

3. Stir Fry – one of the easy vegetarian meals, get some shitake mushrooms and remove the stems, then slice the caps into your preferred size and fry them with some vegetable oil. Then add your vegetables of choice such as snow peas, broccoli, water chestnuts etc. Then add your favorite sauce; teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, chili oil, black bean sauce or rice vinegar along with any of your preferred spices.

Try these mushroom recipes and you will find that they make great vegetarian meals that are good for you and taste great too.