Pro Tip: How to Sauté Mushrooms the Right Way
Get the umami flavor you deserve from your mushrooms.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ve probably been sautéeing your mushrooms the wrong way all these years. I know I was. I only figured this out when I went to chef school. The good news is it’s a really easy fix, and I’m going to show you how.
There are so many different kinds of mushrooms, with so many different flavor profiles that are worth spending a lifetime exploring. But not all of them can be cooked the way I am suggesting. Enoki, truffle, or morel mushrooms for example should not be browned in this way. This technique will work best with firm mushrooms with high water content like porcini, button, portabello, and cremini. These last three, by the way, are all essentially the same mushroom, just different colors and stages of maturity.
Mushrooms are really magic. No, not the kind of magic that makes you see God, or concentric rings of rainbow unicorns and teddy bears. Though, sometimes it does feel like even the most basic white button mushrooms, when properly sautéed, make me want to talk to the trees and worship whatever god put them on this earth.
Mushrooms have the most incredible capacity to produce pure umami flavoring that will transform any dish they come into contact with. The problem is, most people are mostly just boiling them in their own juices by overcrowding the pan, and stirring them too often. You only get the kind of browning that brings out all that savory delight by cooking them in smaller batches over fairly high heat, in a lot of butter. It’s quite similar to the way you would approach browning meat in a pan.
cover them in fat
let them brown before stirring
work quickly over fairly high heat so the mushrooms retain their form
don’t salt until the very end or they will lose their water
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