Foil-Baked Garlic Portobellos
Big mushroom caps, garlic, and oil, cooked in foil in the coals until they give up their juice.
- calories
- 430
- weight
- 7 oz
- cal / oz
- 61
- protein
- 10 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Grill grate
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Vegetarian
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- Foil packet
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Large portobello caps | 2, about 3 inches across | whole mushrooms ride better than sliced |
|---|---|---|
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp | dropper bottle |
| Garlic | 2 cloves | or 1 tsp granulated garlic |
| Soy sauce | 2 tsp | balsamic works too |
| Cooked rice or instant rice | 1 cup, prepared | leftover from last night's pot |
| Sun-dried tomatoes | 2 tbsp, chopped | the dry-packed kind |
| Olives | 2 tbsp, chopped | pouch, not jar |
| Dried basil or oregano | 1 tsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste | |
| Heavy-duty foil | 2 sheets |
Method
- Wipe the caps clean with a dry bandana. Do not rinse them. A wet mushroom steams instead of browning and comes out slack.
- Snap out the stems and chop them. Mince the garlic.
- Mix the chopped stems, garlic, rice, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, herbs, soy sauce, and half the oil in a mug or bag.
- Brush the outside of each cap with the rest of the oil. Set each one gill side up on a sheet of foil and pile the filling in.
- Fold the foil into a sealed packet with a little air space above the filling so it does not crush the cap.
- Set the packets on a grate over the fire, or on raked coals off to one side. Twenty minutes.
- Open one and check. The cap should be dark and sitting in its own liquid. If it still looks pale and firm, close it and give it five more minutes.
- Eat straight out of the foil.
Mushroom caps are mostly water, and the whole method is about getting that water to work for you. Sealed in foil, the cap releases its liquid and then sits and cooks in it, which is why this needs no water carried in and no pot. The rice and the sun-dried tomatoes soak that liquid back up so nothing runs out when you open the packet.
The original is a fridge-clean-out dish, so the trail version fixes the fillings to things that keep: dry-packed tomatoes, pouch olives, dried herbs, and rice you already cooked. Cheese and egg are off the list because neither is worth the cooler space here. The mushrooms are the only item that needs to stay cold, and they only need to survive the drive.
Packing
Mushrooms go in a hard container in the cooler or they arrive as pulp. Everything else is shelf-stable and can be premixed in one bag at home. Cook an extra cap and eat it cold in a tortilla the next day.
Variations
- Chopped salami or a foil pouch of chicken in the filling pushes it past 25 g of protein.
- A spoonful of pesto stirred through the rice replaces the herbs and the oil at once.
- No rice left? Use couscous rehydrated in the mug instead, which drops the gluten-free option but takes five minutes.
https://hedgecombers.com/baked-garlic-mushrooms