Wood ear mushrooms represented a challenge for this series. Not because they are difficult to cook with. No, I find wood ear mushrooms are often simpler to cook with than shiitake. But the point of this series is to talk about how various species of exotic mushrooms are often prepared and used in Japan, one of the leading mushroom consumers in the world. The target audience, in this case, is what is challenging. Europeans and other Western consumers usually do not like wood ear mushrooms when they first encounter them.

In fact, in my experience, many Westerners do not like any remotely firm gelatinous texture. Contemporary Western diets are centered around crunchy, chewy or creamy textures, with a major emphasis on consistency and a narrow range of textures. For example, most Europeans I have met do not even like konyaku, the similar to cellophane noodle-like gelatin made from the konyaku plant, which Japan uses in miso soup, salad, and a number of other stewed vegetable dishes in Japanese cuisine. This is despite the fact that konyaku is almost indistinguishable from tapioca or nata de coco.

Wood ear mushrooms retain their bulk and their texture even after extensive cooking. They don’t thicken sauces or give off any viscous liquids. They don’t release any noticeable smell. They don’t impact the taste of a dish_emdash_at all. Wood ear mushrooms have a texture similar to many seaweeds, particularly kombu (kelp) and many Japanese are often surprised to find out that wood ear mushrooms are not a seaweed but a mushroom (it doesn’t help that the Japanese name, kikurage, does not include the word for mushroom, take, and kurage means “jellyfish” conjuring up images of the sea). For people that regularly eat seaweed and konyaku, biting into a wood ear mushroom is unremarkable. Yet, many Westerners trying them for the first time can be genuine revulsed by the texture.

I was one of those Westerners. People with ADHD, like myself, are often extra-sensitive to sensory inputs of texture. The issue is that wood ear mushrooms are gelatinous…with a crunch_emdash_this is the only way I can describe the texture. And textures are one of the hardest barriers to overcome with foods. Nonetheless I have come to love wood ear mushrooms, so much so, that I may end up eating more wood ear mushrooms in 2023 than shiitake. However, the way I typically prep wood ear mushrooms reflects my initial issues with the texture rather than a common preparation technique in Japan.

I have found that cutting wood ear mushrooms into thin, julienne-like strips makes the texture much less obtrusive in a dish. I also generally feel this method makes wood ear mushrooms easier to eat and easier to chew. I’m very big, for any mushroom and most vegetables, on manageable bite sizes and also on not letting any one ingredient interfere too much with a dish’s texture (which already puts me at odds with Japan’s culinary traditions). With mushrooms of all varieties, this is also quite important to ensure they are evenly cooked. Smaller sizes also make mushrooms easier to digest.

There are a few exceptions to my julienning preference. Making South Korean namul with bean sprouts and wood ear mushrooms is amazing and simple. In Chinese-style fried noodle dishes, chunky bits of wood ear mushroom complement the texture and structure of the dish. I also use large chunks of wood ear mushrooms when making a Japanese-fusion style of the French stew, pot au feu with roast beef and various other localized ingredients including shiitake and balls of konyaku. Wood ear mushrooms also make a good substitute for squid in calamari.

Wood ear mushrooms in Japan
In Japan, wood ear mushrooms are primarily used in either Chinese cooking, or shredded and used as a topping for ramen or buckwheat soba noodles. Another popular use is in salads and seaweed dishes. Annual consumption of wood ear mushrooms in Japan is stable, ranging around 26,000 metric tons per year, which makes wood ear mushrooms the sixth most popular variety of mushroom in Japan, just ahead of nameko. What is unique about wood ear mushrooms, however, is that Japan imports 96% of its wood ear mushrooms from China. Wood ear mushrooms are the only mushroom widely used in Japan that is primarily imported. All other varieties, even for shiitake, Japanese growers have a throttlehold on the domestic market, not least because of high standards for quality. In recent years though, buoyed by increasing concerns about food safety and incidents where high concentrations of heavy metals were found in Chinese imported wood ear mushrooms (including arsenic), domestic production of wood ear mushrooms is booming.

In the past decade Japanese wood ear mushroom production has grown to exceed 1000 tons annually. As recently as 2010 domestic production of wood ear mushrooms was nearly non-existent, and growth has exceeded 3000% by some measures. The high prices and stable demand for domestic wood ear mushrooms has continued to lure more producers and currently, various infrastructure from spawn to other specialized machinery and cultivation systems are in development to support this relatively new sector of the Japanese mushroom industry.

If the texture of wood ear mushrooms is an acquired taste, the aroma and taste make wood ear mushrooms so useful and so fun to cook with. This is because wood ear mushrooms have almost no detectable smell and when cooked have no flavor in and of themselves. I can put wood ear mushrooms in anything and they won’t interfere with the flavor or smells of the end dish. Wood ear mushrooms don’t thicken sauces, or add umami flavor, or even really taste like a mushroom. As one of the most neutral-tasting ingredients I have ever encountered, wood ear mushrooms are easy to use and flexible because of this trait.

Therefore, wood ear mushrooms are useful to add bulk structure to a dish while keeping it low calorie. Wood ear mushrooms are very high in fiber and extremely low in calories, which makes them a fantastic diet food. Because they retain their bulk, don’t cook down, and the texture is also resistant to even extended cooking, wood ear mushrooms help add structure and improve the texture of almost any dish. I find they work especially well for dishes with crunchy or chewy textures, especially pasta and other noodle dishes and as a substitute for squid in vegan dishes.

Wood ear mushrooms are typically dried and are re-hydrated before cooking. Among mushrooms, I would say wood ear mushrooms are very simple to dry, and are often partially dried in the sun first, which also increases the vitamin D content of the end product. Compared to fresh wood ear mushrooms, dried wood ear mushrooms are crisper and less gelatinous after re-hydrating, and thus probably suit Western palettes better. That makes wood ear mushrooms one variety that growers can sell primarily in dried form, which, in proper storage conditions, increases the shelf life to up to two years.

As this series draws to a close in the second to last installment, I had a very easy time settling on a Japanese dish to use, but struggled more than with other varieties to decide on a “Western” dish to highlight with wood ear mushrooms. I eventually returned to my roots growing up in South Louisiana and settled on a wood ear mushroom jambalaya. As one of the signature home meals of South Louisiana, I was aware adding such a foreign ingredient was close to sacrilege, but I found that wood ear mushrooms are a good fit. Properly julienned, the texture of wood ear mushrooms is almost imperceptible in this dish and adds a nice bulk and chew to it.

What led me to try making jambalaya with wood ear mushrooms is that wood ear mushrooms are so commonly used in fried rice, stir fries, and other pan-fried vegetables dishes in China. Jambalaya, despite its carnivore image, is also relatively straight-forward for vegans and vegetarians to adapt (if plant-based, smoked sausages are available).

For a non-Westerner dish, I picked one of my favorite Japanese side dishes, kinpira gobo. Gobo is the Japanese word for burdock root, which is one of the most delicious and underrated vegetables in the world. Burdock root has a rich, earthy sweet and savory flavor combined with a firm and pleasantly crispy, chewy texture even after cooking. I am frankly surprised it hasn’t been more widely discovered (or rediscovered; burdock root was a common food in medieval Europe). Burdock root is absolutely loaded with fiber, antioxidants, and is one of the most magnesium dense vegetables around. This sweet and spicy side dish of stir-fried root vegetables works very well with julienned wood ear mushrooms_emdash_even if I am likely one of the only people in Japan to cook kinpira with wood ear mushrooms.