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If you know me – or read many of my recipes – you already know that we eat a LOT of mushrooms.

In fact, mushrooms are a staple in our home for side dishes and stuffings and meals alike. They often play a starring role in our meatless mains.

Which means I have to keep finding ways to reinvent them into tasty new meals.

Quinoa is another frequent flier here, because it’s more than a filler carb. In fact, it’s the only grain that is a complete protein. What’s that mean, you ask? Quinoa contains those necessary amino acids that we humans cannot produce ourselves – all nine of ’em! In short, its protein and nutrient-rich punch more than offsets its carb content.

So what’s a frugal femme to do to whip up something less-than-bland with those two ingredients?

Enter the garden bounty. We have tomatoes and basil out the wazoo thanks to an above average growing season. FUN FACT: my tomato plants this year were taller than I! 🙂

Anyway, the hubs suggested some homemade pizza sauce, and I got to thinking….why not mix it into some quinoa?

Stuff it into some roasted mushroom caps, top it with fresh basil and mozzarella, and voila! Pizza margherita quinoa portabella caps became a thing.

I used up a lot of tomatoes with this pizza sauce recipe from those great cooks over at Make Your Meals. And since it uses the Instant Pot, it really couldn’t have been much easier. One batch of this yielded me six quart-size freezer bags of sauce with about 2 cups of sauce per bag.

Start Prepping Your Caps

Begin by gently wiping loose debris off the caps with a damp paper towel or clean kitchen towel.

If you’re not sure why to wipe instead of rinse, it’s because rinsing introduces a lot of moisture into the mushroom. The moisture can take a lot of the earthy, natural flavors of the mushroom away, leaving them rather tasteless. Worse, it can toughen them up, and no one wants to eat a ‘shroom with a texture like a pencil eraser!

After cleaning, remove the stems – if they are attached – and gently scrape out the gills with a spoon. Feel free to save the stems, we often use them to help flavor stock. Or you can chop them finely, sauté them, and add them to the quinoa. You can even discard them or compost them, no judgment here!

Preheat your oven to a good roasting temperature, 425 degrees F, and place the caps on a parchment paper lined baking sheet. The paper will help keep your baking sheet clean and absorb some of the moisture the caps throw off during roasting.

Roast them for 15-20 minutes until tender and nicely browned. They should have a little softness to them when pressed with your finger but spring back into shape.

Make Your Quinoa and Get that Basil Ready

While the mushrooms roast, bring 2 cups of liquid to a boil over high heat. Notice I said liquid, because we prefer to cook ours in stock for extra flavor. I used chicken broth, but beef or vegetable would also work. And water is perfectly fine, too.

Once boiling, add 1 cup of quinoa and turn heat back to medium. Cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 15 minutes. Most of the liquid should be absorbed by this point.

Remove the quinoa from the heat, uncover and allow to stand about 3 minutes to soak up any remaining liquids.

Stir the basil into the quinoa with about 1/2 cup of your pizza sauce of choice. You want just enough sauce to bind the quinoa together, so if it needs more, add it in small increments to avoid it getting too runny.

Stuffing the ‘Shroom Caps

After your caps are nicely roasted and tender, remove the excess liquids from the inner parts of the caps with dry paper towels or a clean kitchen towel.

I transferred mine at this point to oven-safe serving dishes. I didn’t want to roast them in the dishes because of all the accumulated juices underneath possibly making the bottom mushy. Plus, I was too lazy to cut the parchment paper to size. 😉

Return the caps to the oven and bake 5-7 minutes longer until the cheese has melted.

Top the caps with the reserved basil to garnish and serve immediately.

We paired ours with a tossed green salad to round out the meal.

You could also put these under the broiler to brown the tops of the cheese – I might try that next time, that sounds so good.

Let me know what you’re making with all the goodies from your end-of-summer garden this year!

Comments or questions? Please reach out to me below, and watch for our next post, Zesty Ranch Chicken Bacon Broccoli Bake, coming soon….