Gourmet mushroom recipes.

The one technique that runs through all thirty

Heat first, fat second. Mushrooms are 85–90% water. A hot, dry, uncrowded pan drives that water off so the surface can brown. Oil added to a cold pan traps the water against the mushroom and it simmers in its own liquid — that single mistake accounts for nearly every soggy, grey, disappointing mushroom anyone has ever cooked.

So: dry pan, single layer, leave it alone for two or three minutes until the hissing stops and the edges catch. Then add butter or oil. It feels wrong the first time. Do it once and you will not go back.

The three corollaries

• Tear, don’t slice anything that grows in clusters. A torn edge is irregular, catches more heat and browns faster; a knife-cut face browns slowly and weeps.
• Never crowd the pan. Two batches, or two sheet pans. A crowded pan cannot evaporate water fast enough and the temperature crashes.
• Salt at the end — except on dense species like king trumpet, where early salt draws surface moisture out and helps the crust.

If you only cook one recipe from this page, make it king trumpet scallops. Fifteen minutes, four ingredients, and it changes what people think a mushroom is for.

How to pick a recipe

By what you have. The list below is grouped by species, so start from the box in your fridge. If you are working through a Share box, that is the intended way to use this page.

By what you want. Centre of the plate: king trumpet, maitake or lion’s mane. Volume in a dish: blue oyster, pioppino, shiitake. Something crisp: pink oyster, maitake, chestnut. Something to keep: duxelles, confit, powder, XO.

By what is available. Half of these species have a shelf life of a few days and cannot be bought in a supermarket at any price — check this week’s harvest board for what is actually cutting.