A portobello pizza runs about 4 grams of net carb a cap, because the dough is gone and a roasted mushroom holds the sauce and cheese in its place. The catch most recipes skip is the water. Roast the cap first, pour off what it weeps, and you get a real personal pizza instead of a soggy one.
This recipe is kind of a jumbo size to the mushroom appetizer I posted on Friday. I have decided to ditch the pizza dough for a large portobello mushroom. As I have previously stated in my cooking I try to avoid making food to substitute for something I shouldn't eat and that is why for this recipe I chose to go all natural instead of making soy pizza dough...yuck!
A large portobello mushroom is the perfect replacement for pizza dough and it makes such a cute individual pizza. I made this recipe as a simple pepperoni pizza, but please feel free to add more toppings.
Why the portobello cap beats fake pizza dough
Who says a pizza needs bread? A wide portobello cap is shaped like a little bowl already, with a rim to hold the sauce and a flat floor for the cheese, so it works as the bread swap without pretending to be bread. The cap is the same low carb crust idea you will find across my low carb substitutes guide, where the trick is to start from a real food rather than rebuild a flour one. That is why I skip the soy and almond doughs here. They are a lot of work to fake a thing I do not miss, and a mushroom roasted with cheese on top tastes like its own good thing.
Drain the cap first so the pizza is not watery
A raw portobello is somewhere around 80 to 90 percent water, and all of that has to go somewhere once the oven heats up. Pile sauce and cheese on a raw cap and the water cooks out underneath, pools in the cup, and you spoon up a soggy mess. The fix is to roast the bare cap gill-side down at 375°f for 10 to 12 minutes first. It will soften and weep a surprising puddle. Lift it out, tip the liquid into the sink, blot the cup dry, and only then build the pizza.
Scraping out the dark gills before you roast helps twice over. The gills hold a good share of that water, and they carry a faintly bitter, muddy taste that muddies the cheese. A spoon dragged around the underside takes them out in a few seconds. Between the gill scrape and the pre-roast drain, the cap goes into its second bake already dry, so the cheese browns instead of poaching.
- Wipe the cap with a damp towel, never rinse it, since mushrooms drink up water you add.
- Scrape the gills, roast gill-side down, then pour off the puddle before topping.
Net carbs in a portobello pizza
The headline number is about 4 grams of net carb for one stuffed cap. Here is where it comes from, so you can swap toppings and still keep count. A whole cap is close to 2 grams net once you subtract the fiber. Two tablespoons of no-sugar pizza sauce add a little over 1 gram, and a quarter cup of mozzarella adds about 1 more. Pepperoni, sausage, ham, and most meat toppings bring nothing on the carb side, so a meat-lover version barely moves the total. The carbs only climb if the sauce has added sugar or the toppings do, which is the one place to read the label. For a knife-and-fork version that scales to feed the family, my crustless pizza recipe runs on the same low carb math in a casserole dish.
Toppings and a couple of riffs
I made this one as a plain pepperoni pizza, but the cap will hold whatever you like. A meaty little portobello loaded with sausage and bacon eats like a personal supreme. For a vegetarian cap, skip the meat and lean on roasted peppers, onion, olives, and extra mozzarella. If you like a bigger pull of cheese, a slice of fresh mozzarella over the shredded melts into a proper pizza top under the broiler. Browse more Low Carb dinner recipes when you want to round it into a meal.
Sources:
USDA FoodData Central, nutrient reference for portobello mushrooms, mozzarella, and pepperoni
Sugarfreechic test kitchen, portobello pizza drain-first method and net-carb notes
