I shop at Japanese grocers a lot. Lately I’ve been buying “Shimeji” mushrooms, which come in a softball-sized clump. They’re grown in a some kind of soil-free medium, so there’s no dirt.
They have a pleasant, mild, almost oyster-y flavor and take well to garlic and butter (what doesn’t?).
I haven’t bought them in awhile. This thread reminds me to do so.
There’s almost nothing that I won’t eat, even if I don’t really care for it. Like clams - they seem to be the poor man’s oyster - kinda tough and chewy, but nothing to complain about or make an ass of oneself at a dinner party.
But mushrooms are the food of the gods. Put them in everything. Grill them by themselves. Make soup. Omelettes. Gravy. Mix them with any vegetable to improve the dish. Stuff them. Put them in rice. Deep fry them. Saute them with onions in butter or olive oil and you have the universal delicious addition to any meal.
We have ads on tv from the “mushroom growers” proclaiming the virtues of mushrooms and telling people to add them to this or that. I usually don’t notice, but I thought of you OP when one came on last night. You’re lucky you don’t have to see your nemesis on the telly.
Speaking of mushroom growers, my kids gave me a mushroom growing kit one year. Despite not having a basement, it worked okay, but not worth the effort.
Which reminds me of the Ray Bradbury story.
Yeast is not fungus.
I have never bought canned mushrooms, but they shouldn’t be THAT disgusting.
I enjoy pickled raw mushrooms from the deli, in olive oil and vinegar and garlic and herbs.
The Russians love pickled mushrooms with their iced vodka. I have to serve a real Russian spread one of these days. Black bread and caviar and thick sour cream and chopped onions and capers and pickled mushrooms and iced vodka.
We have ones that are self-contained in a cardboard box. All you have to do is open the box and occasionally squirt the surface with some water to keep it moist. There’s not much effort. (I might buy one, now you’ve reminded me.)
"The generic name is derived from the Greek for “food of the gods”; from θεός (theos), meaning “god”, and βρῶμα (broma), meaning “food”.
Eat all the disgusting fungus you want, but do not impugn chocolate in so doing. Thank you.
I hated mushrooms as a kid. I just thought they were slimy and disgusting. That may have been because my mother always used canned mushrooms.
I think my turning point was in college when I had breaded deep-fried mushrooms somewhere. After that, I loved them (well, damn few things don’t taste good that way). I then expanded my taste to raw and sauteed mushrooms. The latter are GREAT on a grilled cheese sandwich.
I’m one of the lucky few and my favorite Mexican restaurant seems to double down on the cilantro in their salsa. Grmph
As for the OP. Love my mushrooms. Fried. Stuffed, Grilled. Whatever. But I’m going to have to agree with Procrustus. There should be a note in the menu that shrooms are part of the dish.
TLTE: Just a little quote from that latter cite to show that the original chocolate-eaters were totally down with mushrooms:
Cocoa beans are fermented after harvesting. You wouldn’t have chocolate as you know it without fungus.
A friend has a bar/restaurant. His side salads come with canned 'shrooms. I love them, but many people complain. He keeps serving them out of spite. Many of his regulars order NO SIDE SALAD DAMMIT.
I like fresh mushrooms in a green salad, and I don’t mind mushrooms on pizza. But that’s as far as it goes.
So I’m more ‘no’ than ‘yes,’ but enough ‘yes’ that I didn’t answer the poll.
More often than not I don’t like them. The way I do like them is very fresh, thinly sliced, and either grilled with meat or on top of a pizza as a secondary flavor, like with sausage. I once had a grilled thick smokey slice that a restaurant called a "burger’. It was okay. It wasn’t a burger. It was a mushroom with the soft texture and slightly earthy flavor sufficiently masked by some sort of smokey seasoning and sauce. I ate it but I wouldn’t choose it over a slab of beef. I have had deep fried mushrooms I enjoyed, as long as I stuck with the smaller bites, otherwise I’d just eat the batter and spit out the mushroom.
Any other way it’s nasty. Flavorless at BEST, slimy and rubbery from a jar.
I adore mushrooms. Well, most mushrooms. But I agree with you that they should TELL YOU WHAT THE FOOD IS!!
I despise peppers. Hot peppers, and cooked bell peppers. I’m okay with raw bell peppers, but I’m not wild about them. And they are in everything.
And cilantro tastes like soap.
I agree with you. I don’t know what it is, but truffles just don’t light my fire. I don’t HATE them, but most every dish seems better without them.
Love them, so does my wife. When we would drive from a western suburb of Philly to SW NJ through Wilmington, we would stop in Kennett Square, the mushroom capital of the US and buy a pound and eat them raw on the road.
When my brother was a kid he wouldn’t touch them. Finally, as an adult, he tasted one and liked it. He then asked us accusingly why we hadn’t told him how good they tasted. We tried bro, we tried.