To sauté mushrooms better, boil them first

We all know that moisture is our enemy. Maillard reactionHowever, strangely enough, the secret to sautéing mushrooms better (and faster) is to cook them in water.

Similar to soaking tofu in boiling salted water, Boil the mushrooms and “dry” them a little. Boiled mushrooms will brown evenly faster than raw ones. Since you don’t have to wait for them to cook, you don’t have to worry too much about crowding the pan. A quick and easy way to simplify cooking with mushrooms.

To try it yourself, prepare the mushrooms the way you like them, fill a pot half full of salted water and bring to a boil. Cook, stirring, for 3-5 minutes.Then put them in a colander and shake off as much water as possible (using salad spinner if any), sauté as usual.

Perfectly made dry sautéed mushrooms By comparison, the results were nearly identical. Boil the mushrooms in the cast iron pan on the left first, then dry the mushrooms in the stainless steel pan on the right. I finished with both garlic and butter:

As you can see above, both methods produced nicely browned mushrooms.They were also soft and quickly absorbed the ample amount of butter and garlic I added for flavor. a bit It’s meatier and juicier than the dry sautéed batch, but not by much. Both methods took about the same amount of time, even accounting for the boiling step.

You can’t go wrong with either technique, but I think Boiling is definitely a move whenever you are working many of mushrooms. It shrinks quite a bit in boiling water, so it’s okay to add more to the pan if it browns.Combined with the improved texture, I really want to revisit my vegan bolognese Grilled eggplant and mushrooms. I suspect that if you boil the chopped (or food processor processed) mushrooms before pan-frying, the final texture will be thicker and tastier. for myself.