What better way to wrap up my intro series Cooking With Kinoko, and close out an issue whose theme has been multi-species cultivation, than by tackling the use of more than one mushroom in a dish. Given that most in consumers in Europe already purchase mixed packages of mushrooms, and many in the U.S. do so as well, talking about using multiple types in mushrooms in the same recipe is a useful primer. For me, speaking as an amateur cook and not a professional chef, I mainly look at the same basic traits that come into play when I try to cook each individual species (or decide which to use in a dish), that is: size and how easy they are to cut, texture, aroma, and lastly, taste.

Typically texture is the biggest player, followed by aroma (which is what makes shiitake tricky to use on both accounts, because they have a tough texture and considerable aroma that are hard to use with a lot of typical Western dishes). For my Western recipe here, a (slightly) abbreviated bolognese, I aimed for minimal interference with the bolognese flavor I want and also for the texture to be unnoticeable. That meant oyster mushrooms, eryngii, and shiitake were all out. Enoki especially led to a weird textural combination that I heavily disliked.

After trial and error, I hit upon a combination that worked wonders, both boosting the flavorfulness of the dish, replaced half the ground meat in it, and made for an extremely nutritious, hearty bolognese sauce. That combination was maitake, traditional button mushrooms, and hanabiratake (which I covered in the last issue). In general, maitake and button mushrooms have great compatibility and I find they work great together. Any dish that people commonly use button mushrooms in, they can use maitake mushrooms in the same way or mixed together to great effect. The two mushrooms have similar textures, though maitake is even more unobtrusive, similar, meaty, rich aromas when cooked (though again, maitake is even stronger in this regard), and each bring the same full-bodied meat-like flavor to dishes.

On this theme, I wanted to list some other combinations and compatibilities I have found in my past few years of private research for writing this series, to make a quick general review in the last issue of the series. In no particular order:

1. Hanabiratake has great compatability with cabbage, tomatoes, and kimchi. Even a simple kimchi stir fry rice with a 100 grams of added hanabiratake sees a huge improvement on taste and richness. Despite it’s lack of aroma, hanabiratake adds a big umami punch and has a pleasant, but also unique, texture similar to cabbage.

2. Shiitake and nameko, together, make a fantastic miso soup. Shiitake in general is good for a lot of very rich soups that have a heavy base (such as beef stew or French Onion Soup), but is also very good for making ajillo and has surprising compatability with garlic. My simplest pasta recipe involves chopped shiitake stir-fried with minced garlic in olive oil with a bet of fresh basil and parsley.

3. Eryngii, chopped in big chunks, are a pretty good replacement for Japanese-style karaage (fried chicken) as long as you get the marinade right. Eryngii also have great compatbility with kimchi, but because of their tough texture and how well they hold up shape and structure under cooking, they are best used in dishes that embrace and highlight that texture as part of the dish. Basically, eryngii are very difficult to hide or just use as an incidental ingredient. They work very well though in curries, both Indian, Thai, and Japanese styles.

4. Shimeji are similar to eryngii in that they have bulk and retain their size and texture under cooking. However, unlike eryngii, which are more like the tofu of mushrooms in my opinion (by that I mean eryngii have little odor or flavor and absorb those from what its cooked with), shimeji have a mild but clear nutty profile. Their texture is less tough than eryngii. They are best enjoyed whole, and they  work well with curries, soups and stews. I’ve found a particular niche for them not just in my solyanka recipe, but also for making minestrone and even in baked casserole dishes.

6. Enoki are very popular in the West as a salad topping (in which case I’ll say it again, scream it from the rooftop if I have to: don’t eat enoki raw, it’s undigestable, contains a mild neurotoxin if not cooked, and there is a risk of salmonella or listeria poisoning). In Japan, enoki is most popular as a hot pot ingredient, which is why I decided to highlight the king of Japanese hot pot dishes: sukiyaki, which generally contains enoki. Enoki also makes an excellent tempura, and the crunchy texture and natural sweetness have, alongside its cheapness and universal availability, contributed to it being the most popular mushroom species in Japan for over 30 years. Enoki has a mild, but somewhat similar to oyster mushrooms scent, and in food, it adds both umami and sweetness. It’s not bad as a pizza topping, surprisingly, and goes well with stewed vegetables.

Obviously all of these also introduces a degree of personal preference. My preferences are not universal nor objective. I think they work because if anything, I am a fairly picky and typical American eater, especially around texture (hang-ups around which are common for people with ADHD like myself and other neurodivergent conditions). On the whole, some individuals will certainly have different opinions on taste and pairing than I do, and maybe on texture too, but I’ve tried to err on the conservative side and give a well-rounded intro to cooking with a variety of exotic mushrooms from an American perspective, but which applies commonplace techniques and cooking styles from Japan that are still rare and new to most Westerners.

I have enjoyed writing this series. Having a project like this gave me a good excuse to try a lot of recipes I otherwise would not have tried, and it helped me get into the habit of regularly cooking with mushrooms an getting an intuitive feel for the quirks of each species and how they could be used, however subjective that feel was. I have built the base, gotten some recipes together and built up my knowledge, but the more important end of the project: public education and recipe marketing, remains unfinished. It can be difficult to break through the noise, and ultimately I am responsible for writing about farms and professional mushroom growing, not marketing cookbooks.

I still envision a collaborative project. There is a lot of room in the industry, both to integrate contemporary influencers and also popular cooking channels on YouTube in a way that introduces and demystifies mushrooms to general consumers. I love the core story of mushrooms, not just exotic varieties, namely that they represent a healthy and easy to cook with ingredient. At scale, even shiitake or eryngii can be produced affordably with the right systems and knowledge, which makes them adaptable to high-volume food processing as well and this can be done in health-conscious ways. What’s more, mushrooms are extremely sustainable, using much less water and fewer resources overall than do meat production and most forms of intensive agriculture. This is precisely why I think it is so important to build up the demand now, from the ground up, and why I have invested time, both professionally and personally, in this series. I look forward to the next chapter in this endeavor and what shape it will take.