Picking The Right Mushroom For Every Recipe - The Big Guide | Epicurious

There are more than 14,000 identified varieties of

mushroom

s. Today we will go over some of the most common rare and delicious edible

mushroom

s. We'll dice, fry, and taste, OMG, over 15 types of mushrooms. It's okay, since there are so many. There's a lot to consider, we'll break it down into chapters to try to keep things simple. In chapters one and two, we'll look at some of the most common edible mushrooms, like the ones you're most likely to find in your market, discuss what makes each category unique, and cook up some delicious dishes to show you the best ways to use them.

In chapter three we'll look at even more mushrooms and compare them to some I've tried. growing at home we will also talk about mushrooms as a meat substitute and we will make some delicious royal trumpet fillets and in our final chapter we will talk about some special mushrooms like this chapter one black truffle, the big three here we have three of the most common mushrooms White button cremini and portobello combined, these three mushrooms account for more than 90 percent of mushroom consumption, but that's not all. The secret truth about these mushrooms is that they are all the same mushrooms, that's

right

, portobellos are just mature creminis and white buttons are just the young white version of creminis, although these three mushrooms are technically the same species, they can have different uses , so let's see what makes them unique.

Each white button, also known as a button mushroom, is so pretty that it is one of the most cultivated varieties in the world and has ever been cultivated. For centuries these grow in the dark and were believed to have been first grown in the catacombs beneath Paris, so when you buy white buttons in the store you'll probably find them in a package like this if you're not cooking with them take them out

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away. from the package and put them in a paper bag, this will help them breathe and have ventilation, so when you put them in the refrigerator, you can even leave the paper bag open so that the air flow can circulate and they don't get slimy and soft if you leave them in an airtight container for a few days as if I start to get slimy and they will also bruise, they will get brown spots where the moisture starts to come out.

It will just speed up their decomposition and rot, so you need to let them breathe and have enough space. It is very common as a topping on pizza, where you will see it sliced ​​and then spread on top and baked on top. pizza, they can be eaten raw as long as they are clean and they don't really taste much, but they have a very spongy texture that is a little firm, it has a little crunch but not much flavor, so these are white buttons that have just been toasted with a little oil and salt. You can see the color intensify as the moisture content starts to come out and they wrinkle a little, which concentrates their flavor much more, like a deep caramelized flavor. but still on the softer side cremino aka baby bella so these are cremini this is a cremino like octopus and octopus I don't think that's important when purchasing these mushrooms check under the cap to see if the gills are covered, usually gills covered. means they will have a more delicate flavor the gills are these thin structures just under the lid the purpose of the gills is to create and release spores for reproduction while you cook the white buds start to darken and turn brown anyway when the water starts to leach out, so unless you need that raw shaved white color in a salad, feel free to use cremini for any use you would use white buttons for and it's cooked anyway, tastes just like a white button, fluffy texture , firm, a little crunchy but it is still very soft and looks without the outer layer it even looks like a white button these are portobello or portabella the name means beautiful door in Italian no one is really sure where it came from some people say it was a trick marketing that emerged in the 80s to make it sell better because it was not as popular as its younger brothers and it worked today.

These are incredibly popular compared to cremini. These gills are much longer and very well defined. You always want to check the gills on mushrooms like this to make. Make sure they don't have any dirt or sand particles or twigs in the middle because that can really get stuck in there because of their shape and size, they are great to use as bagels as a replacement for bread or you can do what I'm about to do mini pizzas so we're going to make some mini portobello pizzas using the mushroom cap instead of a pizza base so the first thing we're going to do is remove the stem.

Here we're just going to scoop them out with a spoon, it's like a drum, instead of washing them in the sink, we're just going to wipe them with a damp cloth to remove any dirt that may be on the outside of the lid, now we're ready to cook, like this So we're going to start with a little bit of oil and first we're going to brown the gills of the mushroom down, we're going to let it soften and as it cooks we're going to start pressing down on the mushroom to press out any excess moisture as it loses water it's going to start to shrink a little bit and this you definitely want to do on high heat because you want the moisture to evaporate as soon as it comes out of the mushroom, it's kind of like browning a piece of meat, this is about the size of one of those personal pan pizzas from Pizza Hut of old, look at all that liquid, it's probably about half the volume it was before, maybe a little more than that, okay.

They are ready to cover it so we are going to start with our tomato sauce we add a little fresh basil this is freshly grated mozzarella we are going to grate some parmesan and we are going to bake it in the oven until the cheese is bubbling and browning well , so it's been in the oven for about 10 or 15 minutes at 375 until the cheese is melted and bubbling and browned on top and now we're going to top it with some fresh basil. and some grated parmesan, come on, what could be better than that? Hmm, although the mushroom is tender, it still has some bite to it, so you get a bit of texture in the background and it has a rich earthiness that really complements it. the parmesan and the cheese i'm a big fan of pizza dough but i think it's absolutely delicious and i think you'll love it chapter 2 woody mushrooms i call them woody mushrooms because in nature they grow on the sides of trees and ground wood, these mushrooms They are very commonly used in Asian cuisine and in the United States we refer to them by their Japanese names maitake enoki and shiitakes.

There are two types of shiitakes, this one, which is probably more common here in the US, is the regular one. The shiitake mushroom is known as dongo in Japan. It is much rarer and much more aromatic. They both taste similar although they look very, very different. The typical shiitake we see in the US has a flatter top with a slight curl on the bottom, the donko has a larger curl and a thicker top, it also has a crunchy texture on the top that looks like a loaf of bread after it's baked so they're great for pickling and it's a very quick thing you can keep them in the refrigerator for a long time you just want to cut them into straight cuts leaving a little bit of the stem we're just going to add them right into our jar and then we'll add some aromatics into the jar. a couple of dried chilis, bay leaves, black peppercorns, you can add any flavoring you want, they are a good addition to almost anything you want a little heat and if you put the chilis in anything you want add a little of spice I'll just cover this and store it in the refrigerator.

It is best to let it sit for a day or two before you start eating and can last up to three months. This is the enoki mushroom in nature. This mushroom has a dark brown color and a shorter, thicker stem, but this is a cultivated version of enoki that is grown in the dark, which prevents it from developing a color much like the white button. They keep very well in soups and stews and are a great addition to salads because of their crunchy texture and here we have a small group of roasted mushrooms, all they need is oil and salt, you're not trying to cover it up, you just want to roast them to intensify the flavor.

I really love mushrooms, if you can't tell. maitake mushrooms the name means dancing mushroom in japanese im not one hundred percent sure why they are called dancing mushrooms but i think its because if you are lucky enough to find one you will do a little happy dance because they are definitely my favorite mushroom my takis are known as polypores because unlike other mushrooms we've seen, they don't have gills, they release their spores through small pores on the back, they smell like beer or kombucha, they have that kind of fermented yeast quality it's very heavy, earthy and aromatic It's like a wet forest floor that you want to lick although you can't eat them raw, they have a bit of a bitter aftertaste so they are much better roasted or cooked I love taking advantage of the unique shape of my takis

every

time I cook them so I give them I'll show you my whole fried maitake, kind of like a flowering onion, but it's a maitake, so let's dust it off first. our mushroom with wundra flour because it's a pregelatinized flour that will never clump up, that way the petals and stems can stay nice and separate after hitting them with the dough and we'll let this guy hang while we make our dough again, we'll use wonderful flour for this, about two tablespoons of cornstarch and we'll use a couple pinches of salt.

We will make a beer dough. You don't want the batter to be too thick, so beat gently. As you pour the beer, you want it to have the consistency of heavy cream. Now we have a beautiful smooth dough, no lumps, we will heat the oil and cook, so now we have some oil that is heating up. In order to fry, we have our dough and we have our sprinkled mushroom ready to use. The first thing we're going to do is dip our sprinkled mushroom into the batter, just turn it over and this beautiful batter because it's thinner.

On the side, it will just form a nice thin layer over all the petals and now it's time to fry, just lower it carefully into the oil. It's hard sometimes, but you should leave it alone and let it cook and not make a mess all the time. So be patient, hold this guy still, he's trying to run away, so for our sauce we're just going to make two of my favorite things: mayonnaise and sriracha without the bottle fart and you can make ponzu, you can make soy sauce however you want. What I want is great I just want a little bit of flavor and a little bit of creaminess okay our mushroom looks golden and delicious so our mitaki is fresh out of the oil let's just hit it with a little bit of salt and now .

We're going to trim the bottom so it's nice and flat, oh you can hear how crunchy it is and now to make it look a little pretty, we're just going to sprinkle some paprika on top, this is what I do. I've been waiting all day to eat it, oh my goodness, do you hear it's so crispy? Okay, if you haven't had a fried maitake mushroom, you haven't experienced this, it's so good, I'm sorry, it's so good, you get it all. that concentrated maitake flavor, all that earthy and woody, a little bit of yeast and just a super light crunchy texture of the dough, but you don't lose the identity of the mushroom, first and foremost you taste the mushroom in all its delicious glory, oh my goodness . chapter three oyster trumpet and lion's mane, oysters, so let's break down all these mushrooms, compare them to some homegrown ones, we might even add a couple bonuses and then we'll make some real trumpet fillets, so these are oyster mushrooms .

They come in many different colors, including silvery yellow and blue, although they don't actually look very blue, they are called blue oyster mushrooms. They also come in hot pink, which I couldn't find today. Sorry, oyster mushrooms have current gills which, unlike shiitakes and portobellos, start at the back of the cap and run all the way to the stem. They have a pretty strong smell. Some say it's similar to a pleasant, but to me it's more like black licorice mixed with wet wood chips, almost there. It has a meaty kind of taste, no irony, oh oh, it goes strong too, cooked very nice, raw, not so much, but the taste is nice, it's a little earthy and a little woody, not so fermented and with yeast like maitake, but it has a very pleasant flavor and mouthfeel, similar to umami.

Umami is known as the fifth taste and primarily refers to the feeling you get when you eat something like roasted mushrooms, which provides depth and aroma that hits you harder. on the back of your tongue and on your palate, you're breathing it in, it's like it's all-encompassing, rather than just a distinct flavor on your tongue. Oyster mushrooms are said to have been first cultivated in Germany during World War I, probably as a countermeasure. because they are relatively cheap and fairly easy to grow, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to grow some at home over the past week.

Take a look, look at my baby. Everyone knows Pearl. Pearl. Know

every

one. Pearl is part of a grow kit we got. from ourSmallhold friends, the great thing about these grow kits is that they make the process even easier. Cut some openings in the bag, spray it with water and a few days later these guys started sprouting. This is the lion's mane. The other mushroom. that we grew up leo know everyone all this is leo you will notice that this is a very unique looking mushroom, it does not have gills or pores like the other mushrooms we saw, but instead uses these teeth to deliver the spores.

It smells a little like white button, it's very soft but it's so dense in the center that it almost looks like a cauliflower floret, it's a very good substitute for lobster or crab, it's very chewy but very tender, it's a little more earthy than seafood, but it still has the same sweetness which is really nice and really great tasting. Lion's mane has been used in traditional medicine for a long time and today it is a super popular nutritional supplement. In fact, many mushrooms have uses besides tasting delicious and being a good meat substitute. There are even some mushrooms that can work very well as a supplement, but they are not very good.

They are delicious on their own and if you have been wondering what it is, this is the one I am talking about, this is the reishi mushroom. It can be a more traditional mushroom shape with a cap or it can be shaped like this. which is known as antler reishi, so reishi is another mushroom that has been used for years in traditional medicine. It is said to boost immune function, but it is super bitter if eaten alone, so it is often reduced to create an extract or you can buy it in powder form. Some people swear by mushroom powders and extracts today.

I personally haven't tried them yet, but I'm going to see what all the fuss is about. Oh, and it just tastes like a very light mushroom broth. It is not. bad, I don't know why I was so scared, maybe because the smell was a little unpleasant, but I'm actually a fan of, okay, the royal trumpet, which is related to the oyster mushroom we just talked about, except it has a Its more tree-like shape and much thicker stem, its meaty texture and its flavor with all that umami make it an excellent substitute, so now we are going to make some royal trumpet fillets, so the first thing I will do is trim the The bottom part where the stem starts to come out is not hard but it is a little woody and then cut the mushroom in half lengthwise so that you have the beautiful inside of the stem exposed and now we are just going to mark it so that we have a beautiful pattern of diamond-shaped striping, it just takes something simple like a mushroom and makes it look really fancy, which is always fun, season our mushroom lightly, maybe not too much, and we'll just sprinkle some wonderful flour to create a nice thin crust that will brown evenly in our pan, so we start with a nice hot cast iron skillet, you hear that sizzle, which is great because mushrooms have such a high water content that you really want them to brown and evaporate that liquid as you go. as soon as it starts to come out, we just want to try to get it to brown nice and evenly like you would a steak and we're going to go ahead and add a little bit of thyme, garlic, shallot and a little bit of butter. let the butter melt and infuse all of these aromatics into that fat and then we'll just drizzle the top of the mushroom to finish cooking it and get that flavor inside, just like you would with a steak, the butter will brown and bubble and you We're going to keep basting, we're also going to add our sage, as opposed to when sage can burn if it cooks too long, so that's something you just want to add right before the end and let it brown in that butter.

So our mushrooms smell amazing, they're tender and ready to go, so we're going to put them here with some polenta that's delicious and seasoned with love and parmesan and we're just going to put our royal trumpets on top. We're going to put our crispy sage with those caramelized shallots that I love so feel free to add as many as you want and we're also going to pour some of our browned butter on top because why not? and come on I'm going to stick it with some damn freshly grated Parmesan which is the most comforting thing you'd ever want to eat.

The texture of the mushrooms is so dense and rich that it's almost like eating a slice of chicken breast or steak. It's tender, you get all this deep woody flavor, I have nothing to say, that's too good for words. chapter special mushrooms, we have dried chanterelles, black truffle, hedgehog, dried boletus and fresh morels, for the most part, these mushrooms can only be found in the wild and are not successfully grown on a commercial scale, they usually have growing seasons short ones that last from a few weeks to a few months. This little guy is the hedgehog mushroom.

Actually, it's very cute. It looks like a small umbrella similar to that of the lion. Mane hedgehog mushrooms have teeth instead of gills or pores like some of the other mushrooms we review for hobby foragers. The hedgehog is a great mushroom to start looking for because of its distinctive shape and size, and its teeth are harder to confuse with some of the mushrooms. varieties that have deadly resemblances disclaimer do your own research before foraging this is just a video on how to cook thanks very earthy slightly sweet slightly nutty almost like a very slight almond flavor although hedgehogs I would probably just sauté with a little bit of garlic and shallot and I would probably serve them with something very simple like a piece of fish or something that has a mild flavor where the flavor of the mushroom is not masked, so chanterelles and porcini mushrooms are two mushrooms that are very difficult. find them, they are very seasonal and very expensive, which is why we have them here in dried form, which is much more common than finding them fresh.

Let's talk about chanterelle. Eating raw chanterelles first may upset your stomach, so maybe stick with them. smelling them when you find them fresh is like a woody candy smell in restaurants, many times you will see them simply sautéed and combined with things that do not cover their flavor because they are so delicious and so fleeting. During the year when you really want to enjoy them as they are, we sometimes sauté them in a little foie gras fat and finish them with garlic and thyme and they are absolutely delicious served over ricotta and toast. I don't know why it doesn't look like a pig, but either way porcinis are some of the most sought after mushrooms for their flavor and texture, the stems are abundant, woody and absolutely delicious and the caps are tender and delicate and have a strong flavor that It's amazing with everything from foie gras to chicken or just served on its own and I really can't wait until it's in season and I can get my hands on some fresh.

Morels are another variety of mushrooms that are notoriously difficult to grow because these mushrooms have a very short growing season and are in such high demand that it actually drives up the price of demand. They have a very distinctive honeycomb pattern with ribs running up and down and some smaller ones connecting laterally. so morels can be prepared in a variety of ways, sometimes you will see them cut thinly into beautiful little rings that are sautéed and used as a garnish on top of a piece of meat; Sometimes you'll also see the larger ones trimmed and stuffed, which is a classic. preparation called morel farsi and it just creates this incredibly delicious full dish of earthy umami that just envelops your whole head in joy black truffles so I'm sure you've seen shelves full of truffle varieties products truffle oils truffle salts around 90 of them don't actually contain truffles at all, they just use synthetic compounds that are made to mimic the aroma and flavor of truffles.

I hate truffle oil, so the first time I saw truffles was when I was working at a three-star Michelin restaurant one year. another chef at another fine dining restaurant gave us about a half pound of white truffles just for the kitchen staff to use for a family meal because we had just kept our three Michelin stars and our chef's day cooking made a huge amount of soft scrambled eggs and only shaved white truffle, I mean a pan this size, so I am going to share with you the dish that made me fall in love with truffles and it is soft scrambled eggs with finely shaved truffle, although we are not in season of white truffle, so we're going to use these beautiful black summer truffles, so the key to getting soft, really creamy scrambled eggs is to start them at a low temperature.

If you put them in a hot pan, they will start to cook immediately and then get tougher. For the drier parts of the egg, it takes a little longer than starting in a hotter pan, but the resulting texture is so creamy, rich and decadent that it's worth it and, plus, an eggplant is like gold when I used to work in brunch or breakfast service. The cook who was doing the egg station would keep the pans in his locker so they would always be available so other people wouldn't scratch them. He would keep them moving almost all the time.

They will stay super soft because you are constantly breaking them down. and mixing them together so that it is very luxurious, rich and delicious, they should have the texture of risotto, look yes, so I'm going to give them a pinch more salt and a little crack of pepper at the end and now the shave of the summer truffle winter truffles will be completely black with white veins summer truffles are more of a white color on the inside with some veins but it's more like a gray on white rather than black and white you need to shave them very finely to so you can release as much of that aroma and those essential oils as possible, so even though this seems super simple, it's amazing.

I recommend that you take the time to make a beautiful, smooth blend if you want. I'm very inclined, there's no pressure, but it's very rewarding, it's just eggs and mushrooms, two of the best things in the world, so it was mushrooms. Thank you so much for tuning in and I hope you learned a lot and I hope you go and try some of these. dishes that we prepare here today, do not hesitate to leave a comment and tell us what you want to see next time on The Big Guy. I'm Adrian Cheatham and I hope to see you again.