Chestnut mushrooms.

What it is

Pholiota adiposa, sometimes sold as cinnamon cap or chestnut mushroom. Clusters of small, glossy bronze caps — sometimes with fine scales — on slim white stems. Note the name clash: in the UK, “chestnut mushroom” means a brown button. This is a different thing entirely, and better.

Nobody asks for it because nobody has heard of it. Everybody who tries it buys it again, which makes it the ideal thing to put in a Share box and the best single argument for a subscription over a shopping list.

How it tastes, and how to cook it

Nutty and sweet with a peppery finish, but the flavour is not the headline. The headline is that it stays crunchy — the stems keep a real bite through a twelve-minute roast, which almost no other cultivated mushroom does. In a dish of otherwise soft textures it is the element people notice.

• Roasted whole at 425°F, clusters broken but caps left intact, oil and salt only.
• Sautéed hard and scattered over risotto or a purée for texture contrast.
• Pickled. The one species that genuinely improves in a quick vinegar pickle.
• In a stir-fry, added late so the crunch survives.

Keep the caps whole. Chestnut’s appeal is the shape and the bite; slicing it turns it into anonymous brown mushroom.

What to look for when you buy

Caps should be glossy and domed with a deep bronze colour, stems white and firm. As it ages the caps flatten, dull and start dropping a fine rust-brown spore dust — a dusted tray is a sign of age. Clusters should feel dry and springy.

Prep, yield and waste

Break the cluster apart and trim the base. Trim loss around 6–8%; the slim stems are all edible. Chestnut shrinks less than the oysters because the flesh is denser and drier to begin with, so a pound goes further on the plate than its size suggests.

Keeping it

Four to six days at 34–38°F in paper. It ages more gracefully than the fast oysters but the caps dry and crack at the edges by day five; still perfectly usable cooked, just less pretty.

Availability

Most weeks in moderate volume — it is a slower species to fruit than the oysters, so quantities are smaller. It shows up regularly in Share boxes and on the harvest board.

Common questions