Cleaning and Drying Mushrooms - Tip of the Day

by Max Shrem, Posted Feb 22nd 2009 @ 11:20AM

Washing dirt off mushrooms can be frustrating and challenging if all you have is a wash cloth. Instead, use a salad spinner to make cleaning and drying mushrooms an easy efficient task.

Fellow blog KitchenSavvy points out how time consuming it would be to wash every single mushroom by hand in a large restaurant. They suggest rinsing the mushrooms in cold water. You can submerge them long enough to rinse the dirt off. Alternatively, you can put them in a colander and gently spray them with cold water. After, put the mushrooms on a towel to dry and blot off all the water.

As Cook's Illustrated and blog YumSugar indicate, a salad spinner can save you more time when cleaning and drying a lot of mushrooms. Put the mushrooms in the salad spinner basket and rinse off the dirt until it's fully removed. Finally, spin until they're dry.

Do not be fooled by the food myth that washing mushrooms in water is bad because they'll absorb all the water and lose their flavor. Mark Bittman debunks this myth stating, "Here, it depends what you mean by 'wash.' Mushrooms are made up mostly of water, and they are porous - but they're also grown in dirt, which can stick to them, and you really don't want to eat dirt. To clean mushrooms, rinse them - don't soak them - and don't worry about a little water."

Filed Under: On the Blogs, Tip of the Day, Ingredients, How To
Tags: cleaning produce, CleaningProduce, how to, HowTo, mushrooms, tip of the day, TipOfTheDay, vegetables