Baked Eggs in Portobello Caps

Man, this looks good, doesn’t it? The Portobello cap is just a perfect place for an egg to rest, and it looks so happy and delicious sitting in there. Well… sadly this is one situation where eating with your eyes doesn’t match up to eating with your mouth. We ended up overcooking the egg a bit (I think the temperature she called for was off), but the real flaw in this meal is the total lack of flavor. I found the recipe on Fuss Free Cooking, and I guess I’ll just chalk it up to a taste buds difference since she calls this her favorite breakfast recipe.

So why am I even posting it? Well, two reasons. One is that the spirit of this site is to post failures along with successes in the interest of learning to be better cooks. But two is that I think this could be saved. So I’ll post the original recipe below, followed by some tips that might make it move from the “looks delicious” category into the “tastes delicious” one.

Ingredients

2 Portobello Mushrooms

2 Eggs

2 small stalks of thyme

Salt to taste

Freshly ground black pepper

Olive oil

Here are the original instructions: gently clean the mushrooms and remove the stalks, making sure not to tear the sides of the mushroom (or your egg will just run out). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the mushrooms there. Preheat the oven to 300 (this seems really low to me). Drizzle olive oil over the mushrooms and season with salt, pepper and thyme leaves before carefully cracking your eggs into the caps. It’s easiest if you crack them into a small dish and then transfer them from the dish to the caps. Then cook for 15-20 minutes.

Here’s what I would do to make them better. Season the mushroom caps but also season the eggs with salt and pepper. You could put thyme on the eggs as well, I didn’t even taste it. If there’s room in the cap a tablespoon of cream wouldn’t hurt, and maybe even some parmesan on top for more flavor. I’d also start with the oven at 350 and cook for 15 minutes. I can’t say I’m going to try this again, but if you do and find that it’s better with these adjustments, let me know!