HOW TO: Crisp Mushrooms

After attending the cooking class at the Big Sur Foragers' Festival - read my blogpost about Cooking Foraged Foods with Incredible Chefs - I was inspired to try my hand at crisping mushrooms as Chef James from Affina did during the class.

We are not a fungi-averse household, but crisping mushrooms elevates the experience of eating mushrooms to something exquisite. And who knew it was this easy? The key: use a big enough pan and leave them alone.

Ingredients

mushrooms (Chef James used hedgehog, yellowfoot, and black trumpet mushrooms; I used canary oysters, oysters, and shitakes)
butter
freshly ground salt
freshly ground pepper

Procedure
Melt butter in a large, flat-bottom pan. When the butter begins to brown, lay your mushrooms in the pan. Make sure that you can see the bottom between the mushrooms and that the mushrooms aren't touching.

Let the mushrooms brown and crisp. Flip the mushrooms and crisp them on the other side. Only after they are crisp should you season them. Adding salt when they are cooking will lead to soggy mushrooms. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

That's it. Easy peasy. I placed a few crisped mushrooms on top of a pasta with a cream sauce. Yum.

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