Super Simple Smoked Mushrooms

I've been cooking a LOT of mushrooms lately.  It's the season for Morel Mushrooms in MN and I've had some luck so... I've been staring at so many shrooms in my kitchen that I started thinking of new ways to prepare them all.  What follows is probably the simplest way to cook a stack of mushrooms that I've ever devised.  It's incredibly, embarrassingly, head-shakingly simple, and yet more people want, crave, compliment, and/or ask about them than any other mushroom recipe I have.

You Will Need:

• A bunch of shrooms, any kind
• Olive Oil
• Salt

Rinse your mushrooms and pat them dry.  Place them into a large bowl and drizzle a healthy amount of olive oil over them as you shake the bowl to ensure good coverage.  You don't want them "lathered" or saturated with oil, but you want at least a bit of a drizzle on each one.  Then, give them a healthy sprinkling of Kosher salt.

Now, roll out a heat-proof grill mat, oven liner, or sheet of heavy duty aluminum foil, onto your grill or smoker.  Build a fire somewhere away from the liner.  Pour all of your mushrooms onto the liner, away from the fire.  Cover.  Walk away.

Yes, it's that simple. What you see here is a couple of boxes of sliced Portabella Mushrooms that were left on this grill mat for about 2 hours at 250 degrees.  The best thing about this method is, you can't burn the shrooms!  The longer you leave them on, the more smoke flavor they inhale.  I use some long handled tongs to shake them up a bit, every 45 minutes or so.

When you think they're as done as you might like them, taste one.  If you like it, slide them all into a bowl and lid them up.  They'll keep in the fridge for a week or so!  What then? 

Well.... you could:

• Pile them onto a Bacon-Wrapped Filet Mignon
• Eat them with a fork
• Chop them up and make the best homemade Cream of Mushroom soup, ever
• Lace them into a gorgeous Pasta Salad with some Mozzarella Cheese
• Add them to a burger with some Bleu-Cheese sprinkles
• Toss them onto a Pizza

The possibilities are almost endless.  Recently, I used them to garnish some "Surf and Turf" Ka-Bobs.