Next time a recipe tells you to discard the mushroom stems, don’t

Tom Hunt’s vegan creamy mushroom stem, tahini and white bean soup. Photograph: Tom Hunt/The Guardian

If a recipe calls for mushroom stalks to be removed, take the time to think whether that’s a strictly necessary step and, if possible, ignore the instruction and leave them on, to save both time and waste. The cap and stalk are essentially one and the same thing; both are equally nutritious and delicious, and both can be used in everything from duxelles to soup.

The stalks can perish quicker than the caps, however, so I might remove them if serving a raw mushroom salad, say, and dice and fry them with garlic to enjoy as a snack, or use them up in a soup, as in today’s recipe. The stalks from some species, such as shiitake, also toughen with age, so if yours are fibrous, finely dice them and incorporate into a blended dish.