If you have kids who play Minecraft, you have probably heard them talk about mushroom stew. After hearing Stampy talk about mushroom stew in many videos, it is definitely one of my 4-year-old's favourite things to craft in Minecraft.
One day, when we were at the store, Ian saw mushrooms and requested that we try and make mushroom stew. I only needed 3 ingredients so it wasn't hard... according to him.
In Minecraft, the recipe for mushroom stew is pretty simple. You need both a red and a brown mushroom, and then a bowl. Combine those three items in a crafting table and you have mushroom stew.
If only it were so simple in real life, right?
I grabbed my large enamelled cast iron dutch oven. I love cooking in my dutch oven. I don't know why, but everything that comes out of it just has an amazing homey quality to it. I figured, even if the stew was not perfect, the dutch oven would make it the best it could possibly be.
This is the dutch oven I have: http://amzn.to/2HBJu3j
I had never made mushroom stew before but, after scouring Pinterest, I had a good idea of how I could use ingredients we had to put together a tasty mushroom stew. It has been super cold here, so I wanted to make a nice hearty stew. To me, this means that it needs to have some big chunks of potatoes in it. Chunks of potatoes that are super soft are absolutely delicious in stew.
I used baby portabella mushrooms and white button mushrooms. We have not experimented much with different kinds of mushrooms so these are the types I felt comfortable using - plus they are super easy to find at our grocery store. If you were feeling adventurous, you could play around with all sorts of different types!
Let me know in the comments what kind of mushrooms you like cooking with!
I sauteed up the mushrooms with some onion, celery, carrots, and garlic. Once all of those aromatics were soft, I added some potatoes, seasonings and vegetable broth. I let our stew simmer for about 30 minutes and then served.
It was absolutely delicious!
It was a little bit more of a soup than a stew, but it passed the taste test of our Minecraft loving kids. Next time I would use a little bit of gluten free flour (you could use regular all purpose flour if you do not have wheat or gluten issues) before adding the broth to make a roux to help thicken the sauce slightly. But whether you enjoy this as a soup or a stew, it is delicious!
Mushroom Stew
Ingredients:
white button mushrooms
baby portabello mushrooms
celery
carrots
garlic
onion
potatoes
bay leaf
thyme
vegetable broth
salt and pepper
Saute the mushrooms, onions, carrots, and celery in some oil. I use avocado oil for most of my cooking. I used approximately a handful (very exact measurements on this blog!) of each ingredient. Once the onions were translucent and the mushrooms had some colour, I added my potatoes, seasonings, and vegetable broth. I used thyme, a bay leaf, and salt and pepper for this batch of stew. You can season it however you like - let your imagination go wild!
Bring the stew up to a simmer and let it cook until the potatoes are nice and soft - this took about 30 minutes for us.
We served our mushroom stew with some homemade crusty bread. The bread was an excellent vessel to sop up the delicious broth that this stew had.
So how did my Minecraft fans enjoy this version of mushroom stew?
They absolutely loved it.
We hope you enjoy it as well!