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Sat 10 Dec, 2005 05:56 pm
When I prepare mushrooms for a soup, I always take off the stems. Does everybody do that? Why or why not?
I cut off the very bottom of the stems, but that's it. Sometimes I take them off and chop separately as it is a little easier. (I've always suspected that is where cream of mushroom soup cubes came from. I used to pick them out of casserole dishes as a child...).
Same as osso. It just seems a waste to throw them away. And they're tasty!
I should have posted this before I made today's soup.
Yes, it would have been chunkier!
Do you just throw the stems away? Or use them in something else?
I've always just thrown them away. I somehow thought everyone did.
I have read the purists put the stems in first since they need to be cooked longer than the caps.
Or you can use only the caps and grind the stems for a bit of thickening in the broth.
Or use the stems in another recipe.
Edgar, your mushroom soup will now be New&Improved.
The Japanese are using mushrooms more and more in medical research. The health food guy, Weil, I think the name is, says to eat mushrooms at every opportunity.
I also just cut the tip off. The whole thing tastes great, so why throw it away?
Ahh, mushrooms. When I lived in the woods up in Cow Hampshire, I used to pick my own every year. Couldn't wait for the rainy early Fall weather which brings the little suckers out of the ground. Now I just buy them marinated in a jar and don't cut off anything prior to use.
we dry the wild ones, it gives em a very dense flavor.
Well Edgar, I think youve been sufficiently admonished so I wont "pile opn" . When you filet a flounder, do you throw the white side away also?
Drying them is a good method, farmerman. Or you can do like my mom did: parboil them immediately after picking and store in glass canning jars, each layer separated by a dose of plain table salt to retard spoilage. Prior to use, rinse them off thoroughly in cold water to get rid of the extra saltiness.
hmm have totry that. We sometimes brine and bottle "fiddlehead ferns" in the spring but I havent done up mushrooms that way.
I particularly like the wild mushrooms. We have a huge mushroom industry nearby in Kennett Square Pa. The mushrooms they raise are about as tasty as the box they pack em in. They are , lately experimenting with criminis, portabellas, shitakes , and "cloud ears". SOme of them arent that bad, especially with a nice pork tenderloin or chicken and tarragon mix, with onions in a sauce.
Wild is definitely the way to go for a true fungophile.
Or should that be 'fungiphile'? (I think I just invented a word.)
fungo would deal with fielding practise. Maybe fungiphile or fungiphagiac.
I think it's just 'fungiphage", not 'fungiphagiac.'
phage connotes a lifeform that subsissts or destroys the prefix, like bacteriophage. I actually went to a dictionary and found phagous like fungiphagous would mean a choice in eating shrooms. Coudnt find fungiphile)
I agree that fungiphagiac sounds like a mental condition. Like coprophagiac. Whose our wordsmith?
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