Duck Fat Roasted Mushrooms
Duck Fat Roasted Mushrooms
A super easy but oh so elegant looking side dish. Great for cozy winter dinners, pairs well with almost any protein!
Ingredients
- 3/4 pound button or cremini mushrooms, washed, trimmed, and quartered
- 2 TBSP melted duck fat
- 1 shallot, thinly sliced
- 1/2 TBSP dried thyme
- 1 TBSP orange or lemon zest
- 2 TBSP toasted pine nuts
- kosher salt, to taste
- fresh cracked black pepper, to taste
Directions
- Step 1 Heat oven to 400 degrees. Slowly melt all of the duck fat in a saucepan. This should only take about a minute or two.
- Step 2 Toss the mushrooms with the sliced shallots and put into a small cast iron skillet.
- Step 3 Drizzle the melted duck fat over the top. Sprinkle a little salt and pepper and dried thyme.
- Step 4 Roast for about 30 minutes, gently stirring the mushrooms about 15 minutes in, until the mushrooms are a deep brown and starting to crisp up. While they are roasting, toast the pine nuts lightly over medium heat.
- Step 5 Remove from the oven and top with the pine nuts and zest and serve.
Looking for an easy but elegant side to serve when you’re entertaining? These roasted mushrooms (in our adorable mini cast-iron skillet) are the answer! They just photograph so well and look like they easily take so much more effort than they really do.
This dish came to me as I was trying to find a way to use up all of my reserved duck fat (left over from cooking that whole duck last week!) and I stumbled across a similar recipe using Brussel sprouts. While that idea was tempting, I realized mushrooms would also be an excellent idea for this dish, so I changed things up a bit and substituted the main ingredient.
Sometimes you just get inspired, you know?! Mushrooms ftw!
Along the way I also learned some interesting things about cooking with duck fat (one of my favorite parts about cooking is learning something new!). In addition to being utterly delicious, it actually has some pretty great health benefits to boot! It’s actually far more healthy to cook with duck fat, which boasts a higher percentage of beneficial unsaturated fats, than vegetable oil. And that’s nothing to quack at!
