Beech mushrooms. Shimeji.

What it is

Hypsizygus tessulatus — beech mushroom, shimeji, buna-shimeji in its brown form and bunapi in the white. Grown in tight bouquets of fifty or more small-capped mushrooms with long, snappy stems. It is the staple gourmet mushroom of Japanese and Korean cooking and the one most people have eaten without knowing the name.

How it tastes, and how to cook it

Raw, beech mushrooms are genuinely bitter — this is the one species where tasting it raw will put you off. Four or five minutes of heat removes the bitterness completely and leaves a nutty, buttery, faintly shellfish flavour. Cook it, always, even if only briefly.

The stems stay snappy, which makes it the textural opposite of a soft sautéed mushroom, and the small caps take on sauce well.

• Sautéed in butter with soy, five minutes, whole bouquet broken apart.
• In miso soup or ramen, added in the last two minutes.
• Stir-fried with ginger and scallion.
• Roasted in a foil packet with butter and sake.

Trim the base and separate the bouquet, but do not cut the stems short — the length is the texture.

What to look for when you buy

Caps small, domed and evenly coloured; stems white, straight and rigid. A good bouquet stands up when you set it down. Age shows as splayed, browning caps and stems that bend rather than snap.

Prep, yield and waste

Cut the compressed base off the bouquet in one slice — that is about 8–10% trim, mostly the substrate-bound root mass. Everything above it cooks. Shrink is low because the stems hold their structure.

Keeping it

Seven to ten days at 34–38°F, among the best of any species. Keep the bouquet intact until you cook — separated stems dry out much faster.

Availability

Steady weekly volume, and one of the more affordable lines. Check the harvest board for the week’s quantity.

Common questions