Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer – How to properly clean mushrooms

Growing up mushrooms were just ‘weird’.  I mean they either tasted like dirt or well, nothing. And OMG I wish you were all there the day I found out they were grown in well… ya know…not just dirt. <cringe>  For YEARS this child would go nowhere near a mushroom.  OMG no way! Then one day when I was out to eat with my sister she was raving about their fried mushrooms.  So much she actually ordered 2 plates of them as her lunch.  After much begging (and bribing) I tried one  Turns out, when made right they are awesome.

So I started to research how they are grown ( which I’ll leave for another post) and more importantly how to clean them.  If you’ve ever had a super tough/rubbery mushroom chances are they were pretty much given a bath and soaked in water.  On today’s Tuesday’s Tip with The Kitchen Whisperer I’m going to share with you how to properly clean mushrooms.

Mushrooms, as you know, are high in water. When you clean them you really want to avoid adding more water to them (avoid them being rubbery). However just like any vegetable they need cleaned; they need a bath.

To clean them is pretty simple:

1. Place the mushrooms in a colander and give them a light spray of water from the sink.  You want to give them “a shower” but not soak them.  You just want to wet them enough to clean them.
2. Take each one and gently wipe with a clean paper towel or rag.
3. Use immediately.

You never want to rinse them and then place them back in the fridge.  They can spoil very quickly.