Cooking Mushrooms

Appears in
The Daily Mail Modern British Cookbook
The Daily Mail Modern British Cookbook

By Alastair Little and Richard Whittington

Published 1998

  • About
There is nothing in nature so reminiscent of meat as the mushroom, some types being meatier than others. Perhaps this stems from their being fungi which, having no chlorophyll to conduct photosynthesis, derive nutrients directly from organic matter.

The majority of mushrooms eaten are cultivated, and the range of types available has expanded rapidly in recent times, with supermarkets now offering oyster and shiitake mushrooms, as well as the most common flat-capped mushrooms which are sold as buttons, and flats or open mushrooms, the largest and the best flavoured. The most common wild mushrooms are Agaricus campestris, ‘field mushrooms’, which look like their cultivated cousins but have a superior flavour.