Never wash mushrooms, we’ve been told. They’ll release the moisture during cooking and become slimy, they say. So you dutifully brush away the dirt, maybe even buy a dedicated tool for the task, and avoid getting them wet at all costs. And yet during cooking those beloved ’shrooms go soggy anyway, and you become a lifelong mushroom sceptic. So what if I told you almost everything you’ve been taught about cooking mushrooms is plain wrong?
Firstly, it’s time to stop treating mushrooms like a vegetable. They exist in their own fungi kingdom, which means that expecting them to behave in the pan like the other two biological kingdoms – animals (meat) and plants (fruit and vegetables) – is a mistake. (And in some ways, mushrooms are a lot like humans. They can absorb vitamin D from the sun – “tanning” them for 15 minutes in the sun enhances their vitamin D levels.)
