I know you’re not supposed to clean them under running water, but honestly, I find buffing the dirt off with a damp paper towel or mushroom brush is so time consuming and the darn things get wet and I can still see traces of the dirt or whatever medium they’re grown in it’s annoying. What harm does it do to just clean them up under running water? Talking about regular white mushrooms here, no exotic varieties.
Other than wanting to preserve leprechaun and fairy footprints, wet mushrooms will never dry properly - so if you cook 'em right away they won’t saute properly, and if you store them they turn to slime.
Bought ones don’t generally have crap on em, so a wipe is good enough. Hell, if I’m cooking them, SOMETIMES I don’t even bother doing THAT…:eek:
The idea that washing mushrooms water-logs them has been debunked by Alton Brown.
Wash them under running water then prepare them per recipe directions.
Well I never! Thanks QuickSilver! I’d still never bother washing them though.
Unless they’re really soil-y, I don’t bother even buffing the damned things, but when there is a good amount of visible dirt on them (not just a speck here and there), I just throw them through the water and have never noticed a difference myself.
If you plan to cook with them, just freeze them fresh. Structurally, freezing and cooking do exactly the same thing to them, so when thawed, they are “cooked”. Rinse off the freezer frost, which also cleans them. Then cut them up (they slice cleanly and easily when frozen) and put them in your recipe at the end, to just heat them through.
Separate them all until frozen, then bag them loosely so they don’t all glom together. Sometimes I find some in my freezer that I’ve forgotten, they keep for years. So buy several packs of them when they’re marked down.
The reputable cooking sites on the internet disagree. Always cook before freezing.
Mushrooms are so full of water anyway, you’re really not impacting your cooking any by washing them thoroughly. As long as your pan is large enough to accommodate the amount of mushrooms you’re sauteeing (so the water evaporates without steaming them), they will come out just fine. If you’re doing something other than sauteeing them, then it matters even less.
You don’t know what they’re grown in?
Check out the “Dirty Jobs” episode about mushroom growing. :eek:
For what its worth, I always wash them in running water.
Yup. Warm water and a soft mushroom brush cleans them nicely.
Float mushrooms in warm water and cleanse individually.
It’s interesting that there’s a divergence of opinion. I remember hearing “never give your mushrooms a bath” as standard chef advice, but then again, I’ve tended to ignore it.
Most of the time I use brown (cremini) button mushrooms and when they’re young and fresh they don’t have gills under the caps so the surfaces are pretty much solid. I rinse them in cool water and individually wipe them off with a paper towel – very inefficient, but what the hell, I’m not trying to serve a party of 500. As for not sauteeing well when wet, after wiping them down I let them sit out for about 20 minutes before doing anything further with them.
I treat other types of mushrooms in accordance with their texture. With portobellos I just wipe down the tops of the large caps and cut the stems short.
The thing is that when I do this sometimes a fair amount of gunge comes off in the wiping. I’m sure it’s probably harmless, but it doesn’t look appetizing.
I’ve worked on a mushroom farm. I know exactly what they are grown in - I had to mix it and water it. It taught me a valuable lesson - don’t crash your mom’s car and end up having to take any job you can get to pay for it.
Alton Brown (Good Eats) debunked that bit of lore in one of his early episodes.
Running water, soft toothbrush.
Do they say why? To cover their ass, every publication of food handling advice goes radically conservative on safety. What does pre-cooking accomplish, besides a slight increment of protection against pathogens?
I can’t see why it would have anything to do with food contamination. I assume it’s just culinarily more desirable to freeze them cooked, but I suppose I can give it a try and see for myself what happens. I have some mushrooms on hand. I’ll try to report back.
I learned this at a weeklong class at the Culinary Institute of America:
Put the mushrooms in a bowl of water. Throw a handful of flour into the water and toss the shrooms between your fingers in the flour water for 30 to 60 seconds. The flour is a gentle abrasive and it scrubs the mushrooms beautifully!