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Wild mushrooms are quickly becoming a staple in gourmet American cuisine. While these mushrooms have been a common component of diets around the world for many years, they have only recently become common place on restaurant menus, cooking shows, in articles, and gourmet food stores in the States. Wild mushrooms offer bolder and unique flavors, different textures, and new ways of preparation that the ordinary white button mushrooms we all grew up with just cannot provide.
Dried wild mushrooms such as shiitake, morels, chanterelles, oysters, porcinis, and woodear all have unique flavors and textures that can add a wonderful depth of flavors and textures to all kinds of cuisine.
Dried wild mushrooms have a couple of advantages over their fresh counter parts. First, wild mushrooms like vegetables are mostly water, when this water is removed during the drying process the mushroom’s natural flavors are intensified. This intensification of flavors is similar to what happens with a sun dried tomatoes. Some Chefs even prefer dried wild mushrooms over their fresh counter parts! Dried mushrooms also have an excellent storage life of up to a year, making them a perfect item to keep stocked in the pantry.
Dried Shiitake Mushrooms have a wonderful mushroomie flavor combined with culinary versatility and an economical price. When reconstituted these delicious mushrooms have a meaty texture and a strong woodsy flavor that will not overpower foods that they are combined with. This makes them easily substituted into any recipe that calls for white mushrooms. Shiitake mushrooms have a long history of use in Asian cuisine, especially Japanese and Chinese cooking. They are also renowned in some Asian cultures for having numerous medical properties.
Dried Morel Mushrooms, because of their superb flavor, have a long history of use in the U.S. by wild mushroom hunters, as well as being very popular in French cuisine. This delicate and delicious flavor has lead many people to refer to them as the “king of mushrooms”.
Dried Chanterelles, oysters, and porcinis all have unique and delicious woodsy flavors of their own. Chanterelles have a wonderful fruity flavor and aroma, oysters have a velvety texture with seafood like flavor, and porcinis have a strong woodsy and earthy taste. Oyster and porcini mushrooms have powerful flavors that need to be used with care when substituting them for white button mushroom in a recipe.
To learn more about any of these mushrooms, or to order some to try at home visit Wild Mushroom Supply at:
http://www.driedshiitakemushrooms.com
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