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Cooking with Kinoko
Nameko are a little weird
Appearance wise, nameko look a lot like their cousin, chestnut mushrooms (Pholiota adiposa), but with a glossier sheen and a typically lighter coloration. Raw nameko are faintly sticky to the touch, and when cooked, they release a lot liquid that quickly congeals into a viscous sauce. Describing nameko like this is not intended to be a put-down, but nameko are a difficult variety of mushroom to introduce Westerners to.

Texture is the main trigger for reactions against a certain food, and, speaking honestly, Westerners who have grown up on modern, “Americanized” diets heavy in highly processed foods, are acquainted with and familiar with a far smaller range of food textures than elsewhere in the world. Nameko are a bit like stewed okra in texture_emdash_which as a Louisiana native, I have no problems with because I ate okra as a kid, but the same as how people who have never encountered okra sometimes have a violent reaction in avulsion to it, nameko can be off-putting to many people on the first try.

In Japanese cooking nameko is traditionally used in miso soup, for which it is an excellent thickener and has great compatibility with, or for mushroom noodle dishes, such as mushroom soba (buckwheat noodles) or mushroom udon. Another common use is to stir fry it, generally with a bit of soy sauce and/or mirin (sweet rice wine) and then chill it, serving it with boiled seaweeds, or grated daikon, grated mountain yams, or as topping for chilled tofu. This umbrella of similar nameko dishes make it a common ingredient for the numerous side dishes that accompany a traditional Japanese dinner.

The fact that nameko is used in many chilled dishes such as the ones listed above, means that demand does not taper off as much for nameko in the summer, contrary to all other mushrooms. In fact, in some wholesale markets, sales of nameko go up slightly in midsummer. As a result, the wholesale price of nameko is a lot more stable on a month-to-month basis throughout the year than for other mushrooms. For instance, in 2022 in the Tokyo wholesale market, nameko prices dropped from a peak of 447 yen per kg in February to a low of 343 in July.

A 104 yen/kg price drop, equivalent to nearly a 25% price cut, may hardly seem like stability, but compared to enoki (dropped from a high of 275 yen/kg to 121 yen/kg, a 56% price drop), or shimeji, (dropped from a high of 446 yen/kg to 241 yen/kg, a 50.5% price drop), nameko have by far the more stable price. That said, nameko growers have faced the same downward pressures on price and flat demand that the rest of the Japanese mushroom industry has. As a result, there has also been large-scale consolidation and the large majority of nameko is now cultivated with automated bottle systems.

If the texture of nameko recalls that of boiled okra, what about the smell and taste? I find nameko have a rich, earthy smell when cooked, that I personally find more pleasant than that of some common oyster varieties. Nameko doesn’t have a particularly “mushroom-y” aroma and works well with mild-flavored dishes, which is partly why it is such a common ingredient in miso soup and many dishes of boiled seaweed or cooked greens in Japan. The taste of nameko is nutty and also not particularly “mushroom-y” either, not as sweet as enoki but with a very faint natural sweetness that pairs well with sweet-savory sauces.

Nameko is a variety of mushroom that has grown on me over the years, after I initially had pretty strong reactions of revulsion to it in school lunches while working as a teacher, perhaps partially because the school often served nameko with grated daikon radish as a gelatinous salad of sorts, a specific dish that I still dislike. Nowadays, I appreciate nameko for the ease of cooking and the ability to make a good sauce without much effort. During summer months especially, the routine of lazy nights goes as such: rice oil and a dab of sesame oil in a pan, toss two 100-gram packs of cut nameko into the pan, add mirin, a bit of brown sugar, then soy sauce, cook down for around 5~7 minutes, let cool off, then serve over chilled soba (or some other noodle variety), tofu, or even just rice, maybe with a fried egg to accompany it. I also like mixing nameko with grated mountain yam as a refreshing, cool side dish. With no air-conditioning I find myself searching for ways to use as little heat in cooking as possible!
If I had to name my number one recommended mushroom for making miso soup, the answer would not be, ironically, shiitake, but rather nameko. However, rather than do miso soup yet again for Cooking with Kinoko, I settled on a non-Japanese dish: mapo tofu, a classic modern Chinese dish originating in the Szechuan province. Like many Chinese dishes, mapo tofu uses a bit of corn starch or flour to thicken the sauté/stew at the end of the cooking process. My flight of fancy was that I could thicken the sauce and get the viscous consistency of a typical ma bao tofu recipe just by adding some nameko and making a mushroom-based version.
After offering various adjustments on every recipe up to this point, this time I am flipping the script and offering a vegan recipe that those who want can modify with meat if they want. The end result is a bit novel_emdash_a strange leap perhaps_emdash_but also makes for a very flavorful and nutritious, spicy Szechuan meal that is also fairly easy to prep and easy to scale up for special occasions cooking for a lot of people. Nameko honestly do not have a strong enough flavor to interfere with the salty-spicy taste of mao bao tofu, and I actually find their thickening effect to be superior to corn starch.

Given the growing emphasis on plant-based diets and the interest in non-traditional foods in Western countries, I wanted to showcase an unusual use of nameko. The added benefit is that I feel like the texture from the nameko is less noticeable in mapo tofu, with the mixture of tofu and the chili and oil-based sauce. I focused on ways to cook it where texture and viscous sauce were less noticeable, as a way to gently acclimatize those new to the mushroom variety.

For the Western-style recipe, this time I went with another unusual combination, but one that came from the same source of inspiration: replacing corn starch with nameko as a thickener. Chicken pot pie isn’t a dish many people make at home, but with a pre-made pie crust it isn’t an especially time-consuming recipe to make, especially for Thanksgiving or some holiday get-together. I also liked the novelty and originality of this recipe, and the chance to try something that isn’t already being done.

Again, the theme isn’t to reinvent the wheel or to showcase professional cooking techniques. I’m not a professional cook for a reason, and my goal is to promote the mushroom industry while also getting a chance to study culinary uses of exotic mushrooms, as part of my goal to have a good grasp of the business from the spawning, through incubation, to harvest, and then consumption. The barrier for expanding demand is a lack of easy dishes to use exotic mushrooms in, and people not knowing much about the flavor pairings and profiles of each mushroom. To fix this, I’ve set out to describe each variety’s unique traits and how best to use them. The series then applies these traits to existing foods that at least some Westerners are familiar with, and does so in a way that at least reduces meat consumption. The flexitarian strategy is both based on my own lifestyle, and as a compromise to maximize appeal, especially when done in a way that is also compatible with vegan and vegetarian lifestyles.

This is the approach that is not only healthy, but emphasizes local food networks as much as possible, and helps support the localized and sustainable flows between them. I also hope to avoid the mistakes of Japan, where mushrooms were developed as a main ingredient and tied to very specific dishes, most of them highly seasonal foods people only prepare in late autumn and winter. You don’t have to cook mushrooms to eat mushrooms. That is to say, mushrooms don’t have to be the main actor, and I try to treat them more like a staple ingredient such as onions or carrots or tomatoes. Because ultimately it is the demand that will create the infrastructure for growing these exotic mushrooms and the infrastructure_emdash_the specialized machinery and automation_emdash_is what brings the price of mushrooms down, which is ultimately what will make exotic mushrooms a widespread food choice for everyday people.

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Cooking with Kinoko

Nameko are a little weird