Marinaded and Grilled Portobello Mushroom Steaks

I made these marinaded and grilled portobello mushroom steaks last night for dinner and they came out delicious! Alongside a pot of fresh vegetable soup and crusty, homemade Italian bread, it was a feast worthy of a king – but 100% vegetarian. Let’s get cooking!

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What Is a Portobello Mushroom?

Portobello mushrooms are large brown mushroom caps, but, strangely enough, they’re really just the mature form of the cremini mushroom (Agaricus bisporus) and another stage of the button mushroom! It’s amazing but yes, if you leave the little button mushroom alone, it grows into a cremini, and then a portobello. All the same mushroom, just different stages of growth.

Mushrooms on the Nutritarian Eat to Live Diet

I’ve written about this in the past, but a quick refresher for those who may have stumbled on this blog post and aren’t regular readers of my blog. A few years ago, a family member was diagnosed with severe high blood pressure, and at the urging of our family doctor, we embarked on the nutritarian lifestlye. If you aren’t familiar with the term nutritarian, it is a term coined by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D., author of the book Eat to Live.

The Nutritarian Diet

The premise of the nutritarian diet is simple: flood your body with nutrients and the body will heal itself. This means a diet heavily based on plant foods: greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, seeds (G-BOMBS is an acronym you’ll see a lot in nutritarian circles). The diet is based on all types of healthy, non starchy vegetables, with unlimited amounts of beans, onions, garlic, and mushrooms allowed, as well as unlimited whole fruit. Sugar, oil, fat, meat, refined grains, and dairy products are eliminated or reduced to less than 10% of the total calories.

I have had excellent success with this way of eating. We have all lost weight, feel better, and now enjoy a mostly vegetarian diet. All of us eat low salt or no salt to ensure we all maintain healthy blood pressure and have limited our cholesterol intake to less than 200 milligrams per day (most of the time it’s zero or under 50) (we know because we track it all carefully!)

Health Benefits of Portobello Mushrooms

So why mushrooms? Mushrooms confer many health benefits. Dr. Fuhrman recommends them for their anti-cancer properties, but they also contain a type of fiber that lowers cholesterol. They’re low calorie, high fiber, and packed with antioxidants. Mushrooms are also rich in B-vitamins.

The Recipe: Marinaded and Grilled Portobello Mushroom Steaks

Now, on to the recipe. I love mushrooms of all kinds, especially portobello mushrooms. But they’re kind of bland. To liven them up, I made a sweet-tart marinade combining balsamic vinegar, red wine, garlic, oil, and mustard.

Tips:

• Choose the largest portobello mushrooms you can find if you want to enjoy them as steaks.
• This marinade is enough for two large caps; double it for four, etc.
• Brush mushrooms off rather than wash them to remove dirt.
• I use a George Foreman grill to cook portobello mushroom steaks. The Foreman grill has a slant to it. Once you put the caps into to grill, check them a minute later as they tend to slide down the incline. Use a spatula and poke them back up without opening the grill top.
• Make the marinade and place the caps in it several hours before you intend to cook them. It’s fine to leave them for a longer period of time in the marinade, but don’t shorten the marinading time. They won’t absorb the flavor if you do.
• You can eat these alone (we did) like a steak – after all, they are grilled portobello mushroom steaks – or place them on a hamburger bun with all your favorite fixings. We enjoy topping them with pickles and ketchup for a vegetarian yummy burger!

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