Stuffed Mushrooms

Appetizers & Snacks

Large flat-cap mushrooms stuffed with a rich duxelles filling, their own stems finely chopped and cooked down with shallots, garlic, and thyme until deeply concentrated, then bound with crème fraîche and topped with melted, bubbling Gruyère. These French stuffed mushrooms are the kind of starter that looks like proper effort but comes together in under an hour.

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 25 minutes mins

Total Time 45 minutes mins

Servings 4 As a starter

Ingredients 

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For the mushrooms

• 8 mushrooms portobello or flat-cap, about 8–10cm diameter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and black pepper

For the filling

• mushroom stems
• 2 shallots
• 2 cloves garlic
• 30 gr unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tsp thyme
• 2 tbsp crème fraîche
• 40 gr breadcrumbs
• 60 gr Gruyère
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• salt and black pepper

Equipment

• knife
• chopping board
• frying pan
• baking dish
• spoon for stuffing
• grater

Instructions

• 1. Prepare the mushrooms

  Preheat your oven to 200°C / 180°C fan. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and set them aside, you'll need them for the filling. Brush the caps all over with olive oil, season with salt and pepper, and place them gill-side up in a baking dish. Don't skip the oil on the outside; it helps them colour properly rather than steam.
• 2. Make the duxelles

  Finely chop the mushroom stems. The finer the better, you want a rough paste, not chunky bits. Melt the butter with the olive oil in a frying pan over a medium-high heat, then add the shallots. Cook for 3–4 minutes until softened and just starting to go golden.

  Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then add the chopped mushroom stems. This is where patience comes in. Keep the heat fairly high and cook the mixture, stirring occasionally, for 8–10 minutes until almost all the moisture has cooked off. The duxelles should look quite dry and concentrated. If it steams rather than fries, the heat's too low.
• 3. Finish the filling

  Take the pan off the heat. Stir in the parsley, thyme, crème fraîche, breadcrumbs, half the Gruyère, a pinch of nutmeg, and salt and pepper. Mix well. The filling should hold its shape when pressed together. If it seems too wet, add a few more breadcrumbs.
• 4. Stuff and bake

  Divide the filling between the mushroom caps, pressing it in firmly and mounding it slightly. Don't be shy, pack it in. Scatter the remaining Gruyère over the top of each one. Bake for 20–25 minutes until the mushrooms are tender, the filling is hot through, and the cheese on top is golden and bubbling.
• 5. Serve

  Let them rest for 2–3 minutes before serving, the filling will be volcanic straight from the oven. Serve on a small bed of dressed salad leaves, or just on their own with good bread to mop up the juices that collect in the baking dish.

Notes

• Mushroom size matters. Too small and you’ve got nowhere to put the filling. Portobello or large flat-cap mushrooms around 8-10cm are what you want.
• The duxelles is the key step. Don’t rush it. If you leave moisture in the filling, it’ll make the stuffed mushrooms soggy. Cook until the mixture looks almost dry in the pan.
• Gruyère is traditional, but Comté is excellent here too. Both have that nutty, savoury depth that works brilliantly with mushrooms. Emmental at a push.
• Make ahead: prepare the filling up to 24 hours in advance and refrigerate it. Stuff the mushrooms just before baking, adding an extra 5 minutes to the oven time if they’re going in cold.
• Works as a main too. Three per person alongside a green salad and some crusty bread is a perfectly decent weeknight supper.

About this recipe

Stuffed vegetables, including stuffed mushrooms, have been part of French home cooking for centuries. The idea is simple enough: take something hollow, fill it with something good, bake it. Nothing gets wasted. Everything gets better.

Mushrooms, specifically, have been stuffed and baked in French kitchens since at least the 19th century. They appear in the classic French culinary canon as a natural candidate, the cap is essentially a ready-made vessel, the stems provide the filling, and the whole thing takes under an hour. Practical French logic at its best.

But the real story here is the duxelles.

The technique, finely chopped mushrooms cooked down in butter with shallots until almost all the moisture has gone and you’re left with a concentrated, deeply savoury paste, was developed in the 17th century by François Pierre de La Varenne, head chef to Louis Chalon du Blé, the Marquis d’Uxelles. La Varenne named it after his employer, as chefs of the era often did. He also wrote Le Cuisinier François in 1651, one of the most important cookbooks in French culinary history, which helped shift French cooking away from the heavy medieval spicing that had dominated for centuries towards the lighter, ingredient-focused approach we now associate with classical French cuisine.

So when you’re standing at the hob patiently cooking moisture out of chopped mushroom stems, you’re doing something that’s been done in French kitchens for nearly 400 years. That’s either deeply reassuring or mildly terrifying, depending on how you look at it.

The duxelles goes into vol-au-vents, feuilletés, stuffed poultry, and fish dishes across French cuisine. It’s one of those foundational preparations, like a beurre blanc or a proper vinaigrette, where understanding the technique opens up a whole category of cooking rather than just one recipe. Get it right here, and you’ll find yourself using it in other things.

Regional variations on stuffed mushrooms exist across France, naturally. In Burgundy, a splash of local white wine goes into the pan with the mushroom stems. In the south, the filling sometimes leans towards herbed ricotta or fresh goat’s cheese rather than Gruyère. In Provence, tomatoes and herbs come into play. The versions multiply depending on where you are and what’s in the kitchen.

This one sticks to the straightforward bistro approach, duxelles bound with crème fraîche, topped with Gruyère, nothing surprising. It’s the version that’s been appearing on paper tablecloths in French brasseries for decades, and there’s a reason it hasn’t changed much. It works.

One thing worth knowing: the quality of your mushrooms matters more here than in most recipes, because the filling is essentially just concentrated mushroom. Using flat-cap or portobello for your stuffed mushrooms from a farmers’ market or a good greengrocer will taste noticeably different to the supermarket variety. Not that the supermarket ones are bad, they’re fine, and this recipe works perfectly well with them, but if you happen to be near a market with proper field mushrooms, it’s worth it.