Mushroom

Not a plant but the fruiting body of a fungus, and one of the few non-animal foods with enough glutamate and nucleotides to taste properly meaty.

Where it comes from

Some mushrooms are cultivated on straw, sawdust or compost — button, oyster, shiitake, enoki — and some cannot be farmed at all because they live in partnership with tree roots. Truffles, ceps, chanterelles and matsutake are gathered, which is why they cost what they do and why their seasons are short.

Foraging traditions are strong across Central and Eastern Europe, the Nordic countries, Japan, Korea and China, and largely absent in Britain and North America — a cultural split, not a botanical one.

Varieties

• Button / chestnut / portobello — One species at three ages. Flavour and darkness increase as it opens.
• Shiitake — Cultivated on wood. Strongly savoury, and far more so dried than fresh.
• Oyster — Fast-growing, delicate, and they tear into strands rather than slice.
• Porcini / cep — Wild, dense, deeply aromatic. Dried porcini is one of the strongest savoury seasonings in a cupboard.
• Chanterelle — Wild, apricot-scented, firm. Needs dry heat or it stews.
• Morel — Wild, honeycombed, and must be cooked — raw morels are toxic.
• Truffle — Underground, in partnership with tree roots. An aroma rather than a flavour, and destroyed by heat.
• Wood ear, enoki, king oyster — Texture as much as taste — crunchy, threadlike and meaty respectively.

In the kitchen

Mushrooms are around 90% water and will not brown until that water has gone. Crowding the pan makes them steam in their own liquid; the answer is a hot pan, room, and patience through the wet stage.

Dried mushrooms and their soaking liquid are two ingredients. The liquid is where much of the flavour ends up, and it is worth straining and using.

Never eat a foraged mushroom on the strength of a photograph or an app. Several deadly species closely resemble edible ones, and there is no home test.

Choosing and keeping

Brush or wipe rather than soak. The old claim that they absorb water like a sponge is overstated, but a waterlogged mushroom still browns badly.

Keep them in paper, not plastic — sealed, they sweat and go slimy within a day.

Mushroom is tagged on 42 dishes from 27 countries in the atlas. These notes are written from general knowledge and carry no per-fact citation — see About.