Ingredient

Mushroom

Mushrooms are around nine-tenths water, and every mushroom failure is a water-management failure. Get the water out and they brown and turn deeply savoury. Leave it in and they stew in it and go grey and squeaky.

The water problem

Put mushrooms in a pan and they immediately release liquid. Until that liquid has boiled away the pan cannot get above 100°C, and nothing browns below 100°C. So mushrooms added to a crowded, moderate pan sit in their own juice, poach, shrink and turn a uniform grey.

The fix is to give the water somewhere to go and something to boil it off with: a wide pan, high heat, and not too many mushrooms at once. They will still release liquid — you cannot prevent that — but it will evaporate quickly, and once it has, the pan gets hot and the browning starts. That is the moment the flavour appears.

How to brown mushrooms

1. Use the widest pan you have and get it properly hot before anything goes in.
2. Add the mushrooms in a single layer, in batches if necessary. A crowded pan is the whole problem.
3. Leave them alone for a couple of minutes. Constant stirring keeps them cool and keeps releasing liquid.
4. They will release water and the pan will look wrong. Keep the heat up and wait it out; this takes a few minutes.
5. Once the liquid has gone, add fat if you have not already, and now let them brown properly on both sides.
6. Salt at the end, not the beginning — salt draws out more water and extends the wet phase. Garlic, herbs and any acid also go in at the end.

Kinds worth knowing

White or button

Mild, cheap, mostly texture. Improve enormously with hard browning.

Chestnut or cremini

The same species, more mature. Firmer and noticeably more savoury. The everyday default.

Portobello

Chestnut mushrooms grown on. Meaty enough to grill or roast whole. The dark gills will colour anything they cook with.

Shiitake

Intensely savoury, especially dried. Stems are tough — use them for stock rather than eating them.

Oyster

Delicate, cooks fast, tears into strips. Good fried hard until the edges crisp.

Dried porcini

A flavour concentrate rather than a vegetable. A small handful, soaked, transforms a risotto or a stew — and the soaking liquid is the best part.

Washing them, and the argument about it

The traditional advice is never to wash mushrooms because they absorb water. They do absorb some, but not much: a mushroom is already nearly saturated, and a brief rinse adds a small amount of surface water compared with the enormous amount already inside.

What matters is what you do next. Rinsed mushrooms that go straight into a hot pan are fine. Rinsed mushrooms left sitting wet, or added to a crowded moderate pan, make the water problem worse. So rinse quickly if they are dirty, dry them properly, and cook them hot. If they are clean, a brush or a cloth is easier anyway.

Getting more out of them

• Dried mushrooms plus fresh is the standard professional trick: the dried ones bring depth the fresh ones do not have, and the soaking liquid is a free stock.
• Soy sauce or a splash of stock at the end doubles the savoury note, since mushrooms are already rich in the compounds that read as savoury.
• Roast them rather than pan-frying if you have a lot — a hot oven drives water off faster than a crowded pan and needs no attention.
• Do not store them in plastic. They sweat and go slimy. A paper bag in the fridge is what they want.
• Slimy or smelling sour means throw them away. Wrinkled and dry is fine, and often better for browning.

Common questions