Deep Fried Ranch Mushrooms!

Don't they just look so good?!

They are!

 

 

But as an honest blogger, I'll tell you something. I much would have rather preferred the mushrooms sauteed and then deep fried. Fresh mushrooms just have that "dirt" taste and smell about them.

Ingredients:

1 container of fresh mushrooms

2 cups of flour

1 packet of Hidden Valley Ranch mix

2 cups of fine bread crumbs

4 (-ish) eggs, beaten

 

In a medium sized bowl, combine the flour and ranch mix. Also add any other seasonings you may want to use. I added just a dash of garlic salt. In another medium sized bowl, beat all the eggs. Also have another medium sized bowl with the bread crumbs. This would also be the time to slice the mushrooms if you didn't want them left whole. (Sautee them at this point as well, I would think.)

We set ours up in the order we'd be going. We also had a baking sheet out to place all of the readied mushrooms on before frying. The process of breading the mushrooms didn't take too long, but we started the oil beforehand anyways. Plus, the longer the oil is on and the hotter it gets, the fast the mushrooms fry.

Flour/ranch combo, eggs, bread crumbs.

 

 So you coat the mushroom in the flour/ranch mix first, then roll it around in the eggs. This part was tricky because the eggs really did not want to stick to the flour. So you had to get down and dirty. You couldn't help but get your fingers completely filthy with this mess. 

Then we found that just placing the mushroom in the bowl and then sprinkling/shoveling the bread crumbs onto the mushroom worked better than rolling it around because at this stage, all of the coatings would just slip off from your fingers. 

 

I told my husband we should just dip his fingers into the fryer. Well, they were coated thicker than the dang mushrooms!

 

 

 These three mushrooms turned out really nice. I took my sweet time with them. After this, it all went to hell. My husband and I tag-teamed the breading process and then I fried them while he held the plate with the paper towel.

 

Just about fifteen to twenty seconds of being rolled around in the deep fryer and these babies turned out nice and golden brown. I was rather pleased with them. From my experience, I never really did more than two or three mushrooms at a time. Mostly because I wanted to be able to control the time spent on one side. And they really have a mind of their own when rolling around in there.

This is a mushroom cut in half. You can't REALLY tell but the mushrooms were barely cooked. Hence my reasoning for the mentioning of sauteeing the mushrooms before hand.

Anyways. If you want something different to add to a dinner menu, these would be it. I'd tweak the recipe a bit to compliment whatever else was being offered, but still eat them on their own as well. My six year old couldn't get enough of them. :]

 

-Erin