Demystifying Mushrooms
From the smoky notes of grilled oyster mushrooms in bulgogi to the crisp bite of enoki in hot pots, fungi add depth and richness to many dishes. Discover how these versatile ingredients can elevate your cooking while promoting sustainability and accessibility in our food system.
I GREW UP in a big family in Howell where we lived on enough acreage in our rural area to keep chickens, garden, raise sheep and generally cultivate a deep appreciation for the connection between farm and feast. We were homeschooled—I have five brothers and sisters—and with a huge range of interests and everyone going a million directions, mealtimes were an essential part of the day to regroup and stay connected.
Our parents treated cooking like the grandest of adventures, where we all learned much more than essential cooking skills. From an early age they used food to teach, so in the kitchen we explored world history, cultural cuisine and classical literature. Foods we read about in books became family projects, and sourdough developed curiosity about microbiology.
Those experiences introduced us to a broad spectrum of flavors and ingredients, but in Midwestern America in the early ’00s mushrooms were generally button mushrooms, either sliced up on a salad or maybe grilled on a burger. I hadn’t really met mushrooms yet, but when I did, they took over my life by storm. It wasn’t until I began growing them in 2014 that I realized the extraordinary range of flavors and textures that mushrooms bring to the table.
When I stumbled into a foraging workshop at Bald Mountain State Recreation Area 10 years ago, I never would’ve guessed that that adventure would lead me to where I am today. I’d been driving down the road, quite literally going nowhere fast, and saw a sign in front of the park: “Foraging Workshop Today!”—and it was starting in five minutes.
I peeled off to park my big old Lincoln Town Car by the beach and ran off into the woods with the rest of the assembled crowd. We spent several hours running through the woods, our guide sharing extraordinary bits of wisdom and knowledge as we carried on. A turkey tail there! A bit of oyster there! A few in the crowd lamented the lack of morels (which generally only appear in the spring after a good freeze and thaw). It was all a completely foreign language to me.
By the end of the mushroom foraging workshop, I was obsessed—and equally concerned about picking the wrong sort of mushroom, the kind you only eat once. This dilemma led me to learn how to grow mushrooms at home. This took some time to figure out because there wasn’t as much information readily available that clearly explained the process. It took at least two years for me to get the courage together to try. When I did, I was completely floored at what a surreal experience it was, and how easy it was. I was profoundly amazed by what an adaptable, accessible food source mushrooms could be if we shared that knowledge with the world.
I began my mushroom-growing adventures in 2014. By 2020 I was informally helping people jump into growing their own mushrooms. In 2021, I formally launched The Mushroom Conservatory, and in the past three years we’ve grown until our gourmet mushroom-growing kits are in 325 stores. I’ve had the honor of teaching mushroom-growing workshops all over the country and I work with several universities where students are learning to grow mushrooms for food and research and exploring new ways to use fungi to create sustainable products and restore our ecosystem.
A great deal of my work today is centered on taking the fear out of mushrooms and helping people explore the incredible flavors, textures and sense of well-being that gourmet mushrooms bring to the table. The fungi kingdom is terribly misunderstood, and there’s a lot of fear around mushrooms to begin with because people aren’t sure what to look for to know they’re safe.
I used to sell our kits and fresh mushrooms at several regional farmers markets and still participate in a few throughout the year. At every farmers market, at least one person comes up to my mushroom booth with a peculiar look on their face and proudly proclaims that they hate mushrooms. Usually, they mention how they’re slimy and flavorless. Given that most people can only get mushrooms from a grocery store, where they’ve been decomposing and had too much moisture post-harvest—or, worse, sitting in a tin can for an undisclosed length of time—I can see why that would be the perception. But going beyond the sorry excuses for fungi that are typical on store shelves, there is an entire universe of flavor and texture that you’ll never discover if you let the button mushrooms guarding the gate keep you from exploring them.
How to Grow Your Own and Cook Them
Commercial mushroom cultivation methods can be quite involved, usually employing grow tents, careful humidity management and pressure cookers or autoclaves for sterilizing your materials. Many people hear that and think it’s too complicated to even try. But you actually don’t need any of that to begin growing your own mushrooms at home, and it’s actually a fairly simple process to get started.
There are some mushrooms that are fairly complicated to grow, requiring very specific growing conditions and sterile processes to successfully cultivate them. But some of the most popular gourmet mushrooms—particularly oyster mushrooms—are incredibly easy to grow at home without any special equipment.
You take a mushroom culture, which is living mushroom tissue grown into a nutrient broth, and you add a little bit of that to a small amount of cooked brown rice and let it colonize for a few weeks. It becomes colonized with mycelium (this is the underground network that mushrooms come from, not unlike a root system, although slightly different) then you take that myceliated rice and crumble it in layers with prepared straw or coffee grounds in a bucket that you’ve poked holes in the sides of.
When tiny mushrooms begin to pop through the holes, you mist above the holes with water once or twice a day, and about a week later you’ll have mushrooms ready to harvest. The entire process takes about six to eight weeks, so it’s quick and very rewarding. It takes less than an ounce of culture to grow hundreds of pounds of nutrient-rich, protein-dense food in a very short amount of time with no special equipment. Those same mushrooms fetch an average of $18 per pound at farmers markets and can become an excellent source of income without needing to invest in a huge amount of space or equipment to start.
The first mushrooms that I grew were pink oyster mushrooms, which have a beautiful bright pink cap. When they first begin to grow, they start to appear as these tiny, adorable little baby mushrooms. When they appear, you mist the bucket with water twice a day, and a week later, you’ve got mushrooms ready to harvest. Thrown in a pan with butter, the mushroom’s flavor comes to life and the resulting profile is a slightly smoky, savory bacon taste that is phenomenal for putting a spin on nearly any American comfort food dish you crave.
Different mushrooms have different flavor profiles and textures. Black pearl oysters have these beautiful smooth black caps with white stems, and they give a savory hint of black pepper—I especially love roasting them with root vegetables or in soups, especially with a pinch of fresh rosemary. Lion’s mane mushrooms are so much like crab in both flavor and texture that you can make the most wonderful crab cakes out of them, and you won’t be able to tell the difference. They’re also magnificent if you slice them into “steaks” and marinate them.
Sustainability Benefits
In addition to their culinary potential, mushrooms play a crucial role in promoting sustainability. They can grow on agricultural waste, reducing food waste and providing an eco-friendly protein source. This practice not only lessens the burden on landfills but also helps sequester carbon, contributing to a healthier planet. For instance, using spent coffee grounds or straw as substrates for mushroom cultivation is an excellent way to recycle organic waste. This sustainable approach aligns with a growing movement towards more eco-conscious eating habits.
Oyster mushrooms and inky cap mushrooms have the extraordinary capacity to remove toxic materials and heavy metals from the ground. My current research is focused on taking Detroit’s old factory land and exploring ways that we can regenerate the land there, removing the toxins from unusable soil and restoring it into beautiful, clean ground with a hope that we can support urban agriculture within the city and create greater food security and small business opportunities for our community.
Packed with Nutrition
Moreover, mushrooms offer significant nutritional benefits. They’re low in calories, high in fiber and packed with essential vitamins and minerals. Mushrooms are one of the few non-animal sources of vitamin D, especially when exposed to sunlight. They’re also rich in antioxidants like selenium, which help protect cells from damage. Incorporating mushrooms into your diet can contribute to better overall health and well-being. Many varieties, such as reishi, lion’s mane and turkey tail, have been used for centuries to boost the immune system, improve cognitive function and promote longevity.
These humble fungi hold the key to a more sustainable and nutritious future. By embracing the culinary, environmental and medicinal benefits of mushrooms, we can enrich our lives and support a healthier planet.
Whether you’re a seasoned mycophile or just beginning to discover the world of mushrooms, there’s always something new to learn and enjoy. So next time you encounter a mushroom at the market, don’t just pass it by. Take a closer look, give it a try and let yourself be amazed by the incredible flavors and benefits that mushrooms have to offer.
Erin Hamilton is the founder of The Mushroom Conservatory in Howell, where she lives with her husband, Elijah, and their children. Raised on a small farm, Hamilton’s passion for sustainable farming led her to share the wonders of fungi for food, wellness and ecosystem restoration. Through her mushroom-growing kits and mushroom-cultivation workshops, she has taught thousands globally to grow mushrooms and start businesses. She sits on the Soil2Service board of directors.
