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Enoki Issues
A solution to repeated recalls
Enoki is the most popular mushroom in Japan by sales volume. Enoki have been the most popular in Japan for 23 years now, and occupied the top spot in 2021 by a hefty 10,000-ton margin, with 129,587 metric tons of production. Enoki are also by far the cheapest exotic mushroom on the market in Japan, with average wholesale market prices in 2021 ranging between 224 and 232 yen per kilogram. For our non-metric readers, recall that 1 kilogram equals 2.2 pounds, and you end up with a price of 105 yen per pound, which is .82 USD_emdash_and the price growers receive is lower than this.

White button mushrooms, which have been battered by extreme competition, automation, and chronic low prices, still had a wholesale market price of 1.45 USD in 2021 according to United States Department of Agriculture statistics. Even adjusting for the artificially weak yen (in terms of real purchasing power, the yen is closer to 100 yen to 1 dollar, as opposed to the 127~130 yen per dollar exchange rate as of January 2023), the price still ends up being about 1.05 USD per pound of enoki mushrooms, or about 2.31USD per kilogram.

Japan is relatively ill-suited for enoki production. The country simply produces almost no corn and very little cereal grains. Contemporary enoki production uses ground corncob, with wheat/rice bran and/or tofu lees as nutrition supplements. This all has to be imported from East Asia, primarily from China, but also from Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. What’s more, Japan has high energy prices on top of the long supply chains, ranging between .21~.25 USD per kWh of electricity, which is less than that of many major European countries but still more than double that of United States averages.

The profit margins are extremely small and, much like many Agaricus farms around the world, there have been a number of bankruptcies and rapid consolidation within the Japanese enoki industry over the past 15 years. However, as a result of low labor costs and efficient mechanization, Japan’s enoki industry is able to eke by even with recent jumps in fuel costs and soaring raw material costs as a result of the weak yen. All of this is old information that I have gone over before, but my conclusion never changes no matter how many times I run the numbers: enoki are an amazing mushroom cultivar.

I can’t think of another agricultural product so high in protein, probiotic fiber, B-Vitamins (including folate), iron and potassium, but which requires so little input. Enoki can be made with cheap agricultural waste, requires minimal water, and has a quick turnover. 50~60 days is sufficient for incubation and fruiting. The growing systems are mostly automated, and around 140~160 full time employees are sufficient to grow 6000 metric tons of enoki a year_emdash_and that includes the packaging room, which is the most labor-intensive part of the process. There’s little waste: the wastewater does not require special treatment; pesticides and fungicides are not necessary (they are banned in Japan); the bottles used in the cultivation system can be reused for over 10 years, and the spent substrate itself can be dried and used as a soil conditioner or mixed into animal feeds.

Enoki has an image problem though. Especially in the United States where there have been a half dozen or so major recalls of enoki since the mid-2000s, including major recalls in 2020 and 2022 as a result of listeria contamination. The problem has gotten so bad that the American Mushroom Institute, which primarily represents Agaricus growers, has had to start doing damage control because all mushrooms were taking an image hit. This is a shame because there is a decent market for enoki, particularly among Asian demographics and consumers seeking for more varied sources of plant-based protein.
Despite that demand, there’s almost no one growing enoki in North America or Europe. Enoki is difficult to grow without bottle cultivation systems and highly specialized production lines, which does not mesh well with the non-specialist, generalist approach favored by Western growers. Essentially all Western exotic mushroom cultivators use bag cultivation or log cultivation systems and primarily grow a mixture of different oyster varieties, along with shiitake, king oyster, and maybe maitake or nameko if they have a really diverse operation. Cultivating enoki would require them to either procure coniferous sawdust when they already use only deciduous sawdust, or to procure ground corncob. On top of that, it requires lower temperature settings, and most of all, the aforementioned bottle cultivation system, which is extremely specialized towards efficiently producing only one kind of mushroom. King oyster mushrooms, for instance, are also usually grown on bottle cultivation systems, but no one in Japan has set up a line that runs both king oyster and enoki production in the same facility because the settings are so different that doing so is impractical.

Therefore, while a decent, if diffused market for enoki is present in North America and Europe, local production is very scarce, despite market prices that Japanese enoki growers would commit murder for. The market solution has been depressingly simple: import enoki from halfway around the world, typically from Taiwan or South Korea, but in some cases from China as well. Enoki requires cold storage in clean containers with good air flow. Listeria outbreaks occur very easily, as do product losses, when you have cross-continental supply chains with insufficient quality control and food safety systems in place at every point.
Large-scale listeria outbreaks from enoki in Japan are unheard of, and veteran enoki growers in Nakano City, Nagano Prefecture, told me there has never been a recall of enoki in their memory. Enoki is, again, a ubiquitous presence in Japanese kitchens, but without food safety issues that have marred the image of enoki abroad. Why?

Short, fast-moving and intensely regulated supply chains, and a consumer culture that prizes fresh ingredients and where consumers often shop daily mean that in Japan, fresh enoki rarely go more than 5 days from harvest to consumption. Whereas in the case of America’s listeria outbreaks, many consumers were likely purchasing enoki that was already 12~15 days old at the time of purchase, and then on top of that not eating it in a timely manner.

Japan most frequently eats (extremely fresh) enoki in soup or hot pot dishes, and enoki is always thoroughly cooked: boiled or fried for at least 5~6 minutes as a general rule. Many Westerners may be eating enoki raw (which has a hugely elevated risk of food poisoning for any mushroom) or are otherwise only lightly sauteing non-fresh enoki past the safe consumption date. My conclusion has been that it is this perfect storm of issues that keeps contributing to enoki recalls in the United States, as enoki is not inherently unsafe. However, it’s a difficult process educating consumers about proper storage and cooking measures, and without fresh, domestically grown sources of enoki, I don’t see a way to provide quality, safe, and most of all, affordable enoki in Western markets.
Enoki has an image problem. Enter name-take.

Name-take (pronounced nah-mei-tah-ke) is a condiment of sorts. To make a rough comparison, name-take is akin to sauerkraut, or pickles. Name-take is a product made from cut enoki. The cut enoki is sifted and washed (removing any pieces of dried out pinnings or stray substrate), and then boiled in large drums. In Japan, the typical flavorings involve added oils, soy sauce, sweet rice wine, fish stock called dashi, salt, and sugar, with certain varieties seasoned with additional ingredients such as garlic, ginger, chili peppers, wasabi, miso, kimchi, and even Szechuan peppercorns. Through name-take, excess enoki production can be processed and turned into a bottled condiment that typically lasts between 1-2 years unopened (best-by dates vary by brand and production methods). Once opened, it is recommended to finish eating within 14~20 days.

The taste of name-take is difficult to describe to people who have never tried it before. There is a very pleasant, firm crunch despite the softness of enoki. Name-take is sweet and salty, but with a savory edge, and it goes very well with many different flavor combinations. In Japan, name-take is most often eaten with rice, sometimes with a raw egg also added, or with grated mountain yam and/or fermented soy beans (called natto). It’s also used to give a little extra substance to soups or added to omelets, and even served over chilled tofu. Name-take is popular as a quick snack, used for small no-prep meals or as an easy flavoring for one of the numerous side dishes emphasized in Japanese cooking.

In my opinion, name-take would work very well on a hot dog or hamburger, and also go well in a salad dressing. It is not necessary to limit the flavor palate to standard Japanese commercial varieties_emdash_those are customized to Japan’s preferences and designed to be eaten mixed with rice. I could see a garlic, basil, olive oil and tomato form of enoki working very well as a quick fix for pasta, as well as chili flavored name-take and other varieties better suited to American tastes. Name-take is simply a boiled and flavored enoki condiment; it doesn’t inherently have one specific flavor (enoki themselves are somewhat sweet and have a mild flavor and smell). Name-take could be localized to any regional taste. I think even a sweet-sour lingonberry-based Swedish name-take could work depending on the context.
The cooking process increases the shelf-life massively, makes room-temperature shipping possible, and, most importantly, processing very fresh enoki into name-take eliminates the risk of food poisoning incidents drastically, thus making a safer food product. I’ve been thinking about name-take since I got a chance to take a brief impromptu tour of a second-generation name-take producer in Nagano in December of 2021. But to get a better feel for what large-scale name-take production looks like, in January of 2023 I finally got around to visiting one of the largest name-take makers in Japan, Maruzen, who graciously gave me an up-close tour of their production facilities in Nagano.

Maruzen: One of Japan’s oldest name-take producers
Maruzen has a long history as one of the first large food processing companies in Japan to begin making name-take way back in 1966. Today the company through its signature brand Table Land and numerous other partnerships, is the largest producer of name-take in Japan. I was grateful to get a chance to tour Maruzen’s production facility in Suzaka City, Nagano together with the plant the manager.

The production of name-take is not all that different from ketchup, pasta sauce, or salad dressing. Fresh enoki mushrooms are cut, washed and then mixed with all the other flavorings and raw ingredients before being boiled in large vats for 40 minutes to 1 hour. Then the finished product is channeled through pipes to specialized bottling machines and bottled (Japan primarily uses glass bottles with aluminum lids). There are several quality-control points. Immediately after filling, the bottles of name-take run past a worker who inspects the mouth of each bottle and brushes off any stray name-take around the mouth that could interfere with capping. After capping, bottles of name-take are sterilized again, then cooled, and passed through sensors that detect if the total weight of each bottle is within a small margin of error and that the lid has been properly sealed before finally being labeled and packaged into cartons. These cartons are then assembled into pallets for shipping from the facility’s warehouse, and nearly all of this work is automated.

Furthermore, a certain number of bottles of enoki are taken from each day’s production and tested for pH (between 4~4.6 for antibacterial purposes), enoki percentage (the company makes 60%, 70%, and 80% enoki by volume name-take), salt and sugar content, as well as more subjective measurements such as smell and coloration. Swabs of the bottle’s contents are also tested on petri disks to check for bacterial contamination. All of this is basic safety and quality control for food manufacturers.
With one plant, Maruzen produces up to 60,000 bottles of Name-take a day. The size of each bottle varies depending on product and brand, but assuming an average weight of around 180grams per bottle, the production line is able to produce nearly 11 metric tons of name-take a day. Even as Maruzen has streamlined its food processing facilities and focused on fewer foodstuffs, its Table Land name-take brand has been a consistent company staple for decades, and sales of name-take have been consistent. The fact that their production line is within a thirty-minute drive Nakano City, Nagano Prefecture, which produces 70% of Japan's enoki, means the company benefits from a short, localized supply chain and stable long-term contracts for enoki, which has kept name-take from being affected by as much inflation as other foodstuffs in Japan have been over the past year.

Starting from Zero
Many common condiments started off as exotic or ethnic-branded niche foods, and consumers are increasingly torn between balancing health concerns and easy meals. Name-take is a relatively healthy condiment that works as a seasoning and filler all in one. Go back 30 years to 1993, and I’m not sure many in the food business would have believed you if you told them a Vietnamese style hot sauce only made in Southern California was going to become a global brand worth billions of dollars. Or that in the U.S. Greek yogurt_emdash_richer and thicker and more sour than any of the commercial yogurts Americans had eaten for decades_emdash_would become one of the staples of the dairy industry.

At this moment though, mushrooms have become an emblem of the current sustainability craze and interest in previously sidelined, niche “ethnic foods” is at all time high as younger consumers seek out novelty and variety. Introducing name-take to new markets is doubtless a considerable challenge for marketing, but existing food processing facilities could be adapted, with some adjustments, to name-take production. Partnerships between a local grower and an existing food processing company have great potential to move into a niche market and grow it from the base up. With Japan as a model, name-take is a promising outlet for familiarizing Western consumers with enoki.

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Enoki Issues

A solution to repeated recalls