Confit is preservation by fat: cook something slowly submerged in oil, then store it in …
- Scott Brenton
- September 14, 2026
- 3 min read
From the lab & the field
Cultivation know-how, mushroom science, recipes, and dispatches
from our Longmont lab — written by the people who grow them.
Confit is preservation by fat: cook something slowly submerged in oil, then store it in …
Drying concentrates mushrooms; grinding makes that concentration usable in seconds. A spoonful of mushroom powder adds savoury depth to almost anything without adding an ingredient
Duxelles is French, old, and the single most useful mushroom preparation there is: mushrooms chopped very fine and cooked down with shallot and butter until
Two rules make miso soup good rather than adequate. Never boil the miso — it kills the aroma and the live cultures and turns the
Maitake is the traditional tempura mushroom in Japan, and the reason is structural: a frond has dozens of thin overlapping surfaces, so the batter forms
Maitake (Grifola frondosa, hen of the woods) fruits as a dense rosette of overlapping fronds. The thin outer edges crisp to genuine brittleness while the
Pioppino has a naturally deep, earthy, almost winey flavour, which makes red wine an obvious partner rather than a clever one. Brown the clusters, soften
Most mushroom ragù recipes end up as a brown sauce with mushroom flavour, because the mushrooms have dissolved. Cyclocybe aegerita — pioppino, black poplar mushroom
Chestnut mushrooms (Pholiota adiposa) have one property no other cultivated species does: they stay genuinely crunchy after cooking, and they stay crunchy in a pickle.
Chestnut mushrooms have one job on a plate: texture. In a dish of purées, braises and soft things, they are the element that has bite
XO sauce is a Cantonese luxury condiment — traditionally dried scallop and shrimp, chilli, garlic and shallot, slow-fried in oil until everything is crisp and
Shiitake caps are shaped like small bowls, and that is the whole idea here: roast them gills-up with a knob of soy butter in each