Mushroom Cooking Method

I didn’t always love mushrooms, but I certainly identify as a mushroom lover now! Much like most of my other vegetables, I have a method for how I enjoy them best. They are full of vital nutrients and integrating them into your diet will help provide your gut with much needed variety essential for gut health. This is a general method for use for the grand majority of all mushrooms.

Author: Stephanie Stanley

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Instructions

Slice your mushrooms around 1/4 inch. (If you go thinner and it will be more like a mushroom chip!)
Get a sauté pan hot on medium high heat. Once it’s hot, add enough avocado oil (my best recommendation) to coat the bottom of the pan. I don’t recommend coconut oil unless it’s refined because the flavor can be strong.
Arrange the mushrooms so that they are in a spaced-out single layer. REALLY. No overlapping and no crowding. Just do two batches. When there are too many (even if they are in one layer) the temp of the pan drops too much to sear.
Do NOT touch them! They have to be left where they were dropped to develop their seared crust. Depending on how thick they are, what their water content is, and if you dried them completely, this should maybe take 2-3 minutes to cook on the first side. Let your kitchen intuition guide you if you don’t think they look well seared.
Use tongs and flip them for best results to make sure they all get cook time on both sides. Maybe a little high maintenance but totally worth it.
Only NOW that they are done cooking can you season and salt them 👌. Salt makes the ‘shrooms sweat which makes it wet in the pan = no searing! Which is why you should wait until the end after they’ve already seared. Once you’ve seasoned them with your favorite seasoning (or just salt and pepper!) feel free to stir them a bit and let them continue to cook in the residual heat.
This is when I often use a little onion powder, garlic powder, and a couple tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, coconut aminos, or chicken/beef stock to infuse flavor and deglaze the mushroomy pan drippings back into the shrooms.

Notes

I don’t wash mushrooms. If they are dirty, I wipe with a damp paper towel. Water makes them cook differently so if you MUST wash them definitely dry them thoroughly.

FAQs

Mushroom Cooking Method - Cook By Color Nutrition? ›

It's called dry sautéing, and it's exactly what it sounds like: you cook mushrooms in a dry pan with no fat or other ingredients. This technique can be folded into other recipes. In fact, it's not really used on its own. You wouldn't cook mushrooms with absolutely no seasoning or fat and want to eat them.

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What is the mushroom cooking method you didn't know you needed? ›

What is the healthiest way to cook a mushroom? ›

The researchers concluded that the best way to cook mushrooms while still preserving their nutritional properties is to grill or microwave them, as the fried and boiled mushrooms showed significantly less antioxidant activity.

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Are mushroom toxins destroyed by the cooking process? ›

The toxins involved in mushroom poisoning are produced naturally by the fungi themselves; each individual specimen of a toxic species should be considered equally poisonous. Most mushrooms that cause human poisoning cannot be made nontoxic by cooking, canning, freezing or any other means of processing.