We all praise the fresh morel..but...

It has been fresh morel season for some time now. The high end places are all featuring them, along with ramps, fiddlehead ferns, and soft shell crabs. Everyone seems to want them for their events.

I like morels as much as the next person, but they are often crawling with little worms.

At the club, we soak them in a large amount of warm salted water before draining and cooking (yeah, I soak the fresh ones). This seems to draw them out. They can usually be seen at the bottom of the pan. The blond ones seem much cleaner thamn the darker ones.

Any experience with buggy mushrooms out there?

Evil

Hey Evil,

I'll tell you, the last few times I've had morels at a restaurant, they've been somewhat tasteless. I attribute this to either my dying tastebuds or, based on your post, the bath they've been subjected to. Do you find that the dousing affects taste at all? If it does, I say, eat the mushrooms without the bath, and a few worms into the deal.

David

I use dried porcini a lot and after soaking them always run them carefully through my fingers and look them over a bit in order to try to detect (a) any grit that has not come loose as a result of the initial soak and (b) any little worms that are lurking about. Every now and again, I do find some (and remove them or the piece of mushroom).

Of course, soaking and washing can have well-documented deleterious effects on fresh mushrooms but nevertheless, washing or soaking strikes me as an eminently reasonable thing to do in order to get rid of unwelcome hitchhikers, if conditions require such action. I believe I once saw Jacques Pepin say "if thee mushrooms are reallee dirtee, I wash them." I have since then felt free to do as I see fit -- to wash or not to wash (of course, it matters too what one is going to do with the mushrooms), reserving the wash option for when they are 'realee dirtee'. (N.B. I try to reproduce with spelling a touch of his accent out of affection for his manner of speaking, not out of any goober-headed desire to mock the French.)

Many moons ago I used to watch Jeff Smith, the Frugal Gourmet, primarily to see what strange things he would say and do (he had some extraordinarily bizarre takes on history, culinary and otherwise). I could swear (but hesitate to do so because this seems so completely insane) that in one of his shows on Italian food, he sang the praises of imported Argentine porcini, which -- as he rightly observed -- are or were much cheaper than those from Italy. But they are or were (I haven't even seen any for years now) also generally full of grit and other unwelcome accompaniments, something which he did not comment upon. Mr. Smith ultimately took a handful of the things and, as a time-saving and flavour-releasing measure, hurled them, still dry and unexamined, into a spice grinder, ground them up, and then poured the pulverised matter into whatever it was he was making... Mmmm, a nice, gritty mineral supplement but not reliably vegan in nature...

One last thing; I can understand someone choosing for him-/herself to accept the possibility of a few wee wormies making their way into a finished dish in order to avoid any of the effects washing or soaking may have on taste and texture but in a restaurant, it could surely be a disaster if patrons discovered vermicelli where they ought not be. I think I would be a little unhappy with such a discovery and so applaud your sanitary measures, Evil Ronnie.

A

I would never soak mushrooms - especially delicate wild ones like Morels (or Chantrelles). Slice them in half, and either given them a "quick" wash or a wipe with a damp cloth. Whatever if left is protein, so Dr. Atkins will approve.

Restaurants are, of course, another matter, but how many restaurants serve mushrooms au naturel - as God intended (or with butter, garlic perhaps, cream).

gaf

I would also never soak a chanterelle. No need to. But try to picture a ten pound flat of morels with tiny white worms crawling in and out of the cracks and crevices.


evil

I think it was Cook's Illustrated that said they weighed, then soaked fresh mushrooms (prob. white buttons) and then weighed again, and said the gain was negligible. So I wash away!

Alton Brown weighed shrooms before and after washing, and the weight gain was, what 5 grams out of 500 or something like that. I wouldn't worry about it with most fresh mushrooms. Perhaps those that are more 'gilly' like portabellas are going to soak up more, but it really shouldn't make much difference.

leek wrote:I think it was Cook's Illustrated that said they weighed, then soaked fresh mushrooms (prob. white buttons) and then weighed again, and said the gain was negligible. So I wash away!

The main ill effect of washing fresh mushrooms is that if you cook them while still wet, they have a tendency to slime. So pat them as dry as you can and let them air a bit before cooking.

Even commercial domestic mushrooms benefit from a rinse, unless you're fond of the flavor of the compost they grow in.

Well, having said hereabove that I am quite willing to wash (full blown) when washing is needed, I prefer to avoid that if possible. The 5% of added liquid is noticeable in the saut

Hi,

I have been meaning to respond to this thread for a while.

Most 'wild' mushrooms I see in the market are buggy and older than I prefer to work with. I have even seen them oozy and sprouting a secondary mold, which should not be tolerated. I am often alerting the produce manager in the grocery store of these problems. There is a lack of experience by many what these 'wild' mushrooms should look like in their best condition, so there are problems evaluating they are past their prime. Another contributing factor, there is a time lag between when they were collected, inspected, packaged and stored before arriving at the restaurant or shop.

A few weeks ago, I was at the Farmer

Cathy2,

Thanks for the informative post. Two wee responses.

Cathy2 wrote:

Mushrooms are mostly water, which happens to be the case with us as well. When they are white button mushrooms, cremini or portobellos -- which are all related species. I will clean them with a quick water rinse but not soaking, followed by drying with a paper towel. These mushrooms are grown on composted horse manure or similar substrate. So those little flecks of dirt are simply not desirable.

I'm glad to get more support (and especially from someone who is so serious about mushrooms) in the legitimacy of washing. With regard to the manure used for cultivation, you remind me of visits I used to make to a close childhood friend who later lived for a time (early 80's) in Reading, PA. Mushrooms are grown extensively in the countryside around Reading and there were mountains of manure to be seen waiting for use. In the summer (and spring and fall), the smell could be pretty staggering. In any event, if one just rinses the mushrooms off and then dries them off and/or lets them stand out for a little while, the additional moisture is negligible.

While I'm on memory lane here let me briefly mention that we liked to go to a bar frequented by the local, mostly Polish workers from the mushroom farms. The place was named "Stanley's" and the happy time special was a boiler maker of well-whiskey (or vodka) with a glass of Reading draught beer for one dollar. This place may have been pivotal in the development of stronger DWI laws.

In respect to the Frugal Gourmet, whom I was entertained by his enthusiasm, I have also pulverized dried mushrooms in my coffee grinder. It is an easy way to perk up a flat tasting sauce profile. Whatever grit there may be has been made smaller, finer and pretty much a moot point.

Note that in my description of Smith's grinding of dried mushrooms, part of what was so appalling to me was the fact that he was using the same Argentine porcini that I knew to be particularly full of grit. Nevertheless, I maintain that grinding porcini and thereby potentially including grit in a dish is not something I would ever want to do. Traditional Italian usage is always to soak them and then use the strained or decanted liquor in cooking.

Last evening, I made for the primo a dish of spaghetti with mushrooms, using some button mushroom (wiped, in some cases rinsed) and some dry porcini. These porcini were from a new pack, imported from Italy (and actually picked there), that upon opening gave off a wonderfully intense aroma-- infinitely better than the previous packs I had gotten which were "Italian" but with porcini from Serbia and China, I believe. Anyway, there was a tiny bit of grit on the porcini which came off in the soak. The liquor I added to the sauce (olive oil, saut

Weight Values of Dehydrated Morels & Mica Caps
by Ray LaSala (Mycological Association of Washington, MAW-Mail) wrote:Dried morels have about 10% of the fresh weight they began with. However, I recommend reconstituting them to only 50% of their fresh weight (i.e., use four parts water or other liquid to one part dried morel by weight) because they will not reabsorb any more than that. I do not find that these ratios are any different for morels than they are for boletes.

I strongly recommend storing dried morels (and for that matter all other dried mushrooms) in glass jars rather than plastic bags. If you do so, they will be good for years.

The re-emergence of this thread reminds me of my spring morel experience. We picked up some at a farmstand in Michigan. They looked gorgeous, and they were quite expensive.

Once I got them home, I noticed a few worms, so I decided to put them into salt water.

My god! The amount of little white worms that crawled out into the water was appalling. I was very grateful I hadn't just given the 'shrooms a quick wipe, and a little chagrined at how much per pound I'd paid for worms.

The morels tasted fine, though they looked a little worse for wear after my extremely rigorous hand inspection.