Venison Mushroomburgers

Do you find a classic burger  and chips meal leaves you in a carb-coma?  Bread AND potatoes all on one plate - well, as a kid I could cheerfully manage a chip barm and call it a meal, but now I'm all grown up I want to enjoy rather more variety before I'm full up! When we have a burger meal in a pub, Mark tends to leave all the bread and eat all the chips, but as I love the way the meat juice oozes into the bottom of the bun, I leave the top half and half the chips. Today's dish replaces the bread with mushrooms, which increases the veg content of the meal, reduces the carb, and leaves us both happy!

My latest fridge dive came up with:

A pack of two frozen venison burgers, left over from a BBQ pack bought last summer
a pack of 4 huge flat mushrooms, a bargain at 79p from Morrisons, but what kind of a bargain are they if they hang around in the fridge unused?
The tail end of a chunk of Stilton cheese (about 40g)
4 small tomatoes
about 6 spring onions

other ingredients - oil, balsamic, butter, seasonings.

This gave me the idea of baking the mushrooms to use instead of a roll, and topping them with Stilton instead of the classic burger mayo. I would cook the tomatoes separately as a side rather than slicing them onto the burger.

Preheat the oven to a moderate temperature. Remove the stalks and any tough skin from the mushrooms and lay them, gills upwards, on a baking tray that has been spritzed with oil. Divide the Stilton between the mushrooms and add a tiny knob of butter to each. Season with plenty pepper (I find salt draws too much juice out of the mushrooms)

Halve the tomatoes and slice the spring onions. Arrange the tomatoes in a separate baking dish, sprinkle over the spring onions and drizzle with oil (I used light olive oil) and balsamic vinegar. Season with salt and pepper.

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 20-25 minutes until the mushrooms and tomatoes are tender and the cheese melted and bubbling, while cooking the burgers according to your preference. Sandwich one burger between each two mushrooms, and serve accompanied by the tomatoes. Naturally, we also had chips with ours, it would have been rude not to!

I am sharing this with

Kitchen Clearout at Madhouse Family Reviews


and Extra Veg at Utterly Scrummy Food 4 Friends and Fuss Free Flavours