Scalloped Mushrooms Are A Keto Version Of The Classic Potato Dish

One of the hardest parts of adopting a low-carb diet is surely breaking up with potatoes. No matter how you crunch the carb numbers, there just isn't any room for spuds, which clock in at around 26 grams for every medium-sized potato. This means no french fries or potato skins, no mash or hash browns, and most tragic of all, a keto diet means no creamy, rich scalloped potatoes. Thankfully, however, you can eat all the cheese on a low-carb diet, so really all you need to do to get your scalloped potato fix is to swap out the spuds with sliced mushrooms.

Scalloped mushrooms have all the cheesy goodness of scalloped potatoes, and you can make them almost exactly the same way as you'd make the potato version. Plus, as a bonus, you'll get a whole bunch of extra, earthy, umami flavor from your sliced mushrooms, which you could never get with potatoes. They're likely better for you than cauliflower pizza crust and perfectly at home on any plate or buffet where you'd normally serve scalloped potatoes.

Scalloped mushrooms and scalloped potatoes can be made with largely the same dairy ingredients (cheese, cream), only instead of thinly sliced potatoes, you'll just use thinly sliced mushrooms. The trick, however, is to get enough volume in your casserole dish when you're using mushrooms. You can certainly slice up a big pile of everyday white button mushrooms, but that will take some time. Instead, leave this recipe to the mighty portobello. These large, broad 'shrooms are dense and meaty, and you can get plenty of large slices out of their broad caps. Portobellos are also drier than other common varieties, which means you won't have to worry about your scalloped mushrooms getting too watery while they're cooking. If you have access to other varieties of mushrooms, like maitakes, they will work well, too. But portobellos strike the right balance between size and price, especially if the goal is to smother them with cream and cheese.

Keep in mind that mushrooms will lose some of their volume when they're cooked, so get a few more mushrooms than you think you need to fill a casserole dish. For a 9 x 13-inch dish, you'll need around a dozen portobello mushrooms, depending on how big you can get them.

The other difference to keep in mind between scalloped potatoes and scalloped mushrooms is moisture. If you're adapting a scalloped potato recipe to work with mushrooms, use less liquid. This is because the potato recipe is designed for the liquid to work with the potatoes to make a creamy sauce. The starches in the spuds absorb some of the milk or cream, gelatinize, and the liquid gets thick. Mushrooms, on the other hand, don't have any starch (which is why they're low-carb), so they won't absorb any of your cooking liquid. Also, mushrooms will release some of their own liquid as they cook, so if you use too much milk or cream, your mushrooms could become too watery.

Finally, cook your scalloped mushrooms in two steps: Bake the dish first to reduce the sauce, then finish it in the broiler. While some scalloped potato recipes are done this way, it's not required to get good spuds. Usually, you will only need to flash scalloped potatoes under the broiler if the oven doesn't get the top nice and brown. Mushrooms, on the other hand, can really use that second step to finish thickening the sauce. Just a few minutes is all you need under the heat to brown the cheese and make the sauce bubble. Then, your low-carb, cheesy, creamy mushrooms are ready to eat.