These baked bacon and cheese stuffed mushrooms are the perfect baked appetizer. Tender mushrooms that still have a little ‘bite’ to them. The cheese mixture is fantastic. Three different cheeses and a little seasoning combine with bacon and bell pepper for bite after bite of deliciousness. I say ‘bite’, but if you use small mushrooms you can pop these little treats into your mouth like popcorn. Sure, I did.
Make Ahead For Easy Party Treats
You can pre-make these baked bacon and cheese stuffed mushrooms by doing steps 1-8 then refrigerating the mushrooms for later. Then, when you’re ready to finish them, remove them from the fridge and let come to room temperature for 30 minutes before transferring to a hot oven to cook and heat thoroughly. I’ve found that you can make them up to 24 hours ahead of time and they’ll be fantastic. Of course you can easily double or triple the recipe if you’re serving a larger crowd.
I highly recommend that you shred or grate your own cheese at home. Don’t buy the pre-shredded or pre-grated stuff. It has stuff added to it to keep it from sticking together. That ‘stuff’ affects how the cheese melts. Shred it yourself and use the good stuff.
Baked Bacon and Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms
Ingredients
- 8 ounces mushrooms 12-16 small whole mushrooms
- 4 tablespoons butter melted
- kosher salt to taste
- 4 ounces cream cheese softened
- ½ cup Parmesan cheese shredded or grated
- ¼ cup Mozzarella cheese shredded
- 2 slices bacon (plus more for garnish if desired) cooked, chopped very fine
- ¼ small green bell pepper (plus more for garnish if desired) chopped very fine
- cayenne pepper to taste
- paprika to taste
- parsley chopped, for garnish, if desired
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 400 F. Spray a small baking dish with non-stick spray.
- Clean the mushrooms and remove the stems.
- Dip the mushrooms cap-side down into the butter and place onto the baking dish cap-side up.
- Pour the remaining butter into the baking dish.
- Sprinkle the mushrooms with salt. Bake 10 minutes. The mushrooms should just be soft and most of the water in them should be cooked out.
- Remove from the oven. Shake any remaining liquid out of the mushrooms into the pan and place them cap-side down.
- In a medium bowl, combine the cream cheese, Parmesan, Mozzarella, bacon, bell pepper and a pinch or so of cayenne. Add salt to taste.
- Using a small spoon, gently fill each mushroom with the cheese mixture. Mound it up high. Return to the pan.
- Sprinkle tops of the mushrooms with paprika.
- Transfer the pan to the oven and cook 15-20 minutes or until the stuffing is hot.
- Garnish with more bacon, bell pepper and parsley if desired and serve.
Nutrition
Nutritional values are approximate.
