You dirty little Mushroom!

Some of the many types of mushrooms

“To be, or not to be, that is the question.” Or in this case, “To rinse or not rinse mushrooms, that is the better question.”

Recently I was cooking with a chef colleague, preparing a spring lamb stew for her client. The ingredients called for sliced mushrooms and we, being personal chefs, like to prepare everything as fresh as possible. So in this case I was getting ready to slice whole mushrooms and went to rinse them under water. She stopped in her tracks on the other side of the kitchen and said “Don’t run them under water”!

Well once I recovered from jumping out of my skin, I said that I have read and heard that washing them made very little difference in how they cook or taste BUT… as this was her client I deferred to her opinion and manually wiped them with a moist towel.

On a related note, someone who was helping me cook recently was surprised when I asked her to rinse off the 5 pounds of mushrooms she was going to cut. I fully expected her to say something about wiping them down, but to my shock she said “I never wash mushrooms”. “Isn’t the dirt sterile” Well as I was Chef that day I calmly replied, that the dirt is gritty and would spoil the dish, and also said that I do not think that it was indeed sterile and its better safe then sorry.

But back to the “how-to of washing”. This whole mushroom biz started me thinking, was I wrong? I too have always heard that washing mushrooms was a no-no in the kitchen. So what’s the real scoop?

I remembered that I had seen it recently on “Good Eats” with Alton Brown. Now this is one of my favorite cooking shows since it really is about cooking and doesn’t have a lot of hype of other shws going on. Yes, it can be corny but the science aspect is usually sound. Was my man Alton wrong?

Next step was to see what one of my favorite chefs, Jacques Pépin had to say about this. I would certainly respect his decision. After all, he is arguably the best chef alive today? Mssr. Pépin says, Oui, its okay to wash mushrooms. In fact many of his recipes simply state “wash mushrooms”.

Now this is what I was looking for, collaborating evidence to support my “its okay to rinse” theory. One more stop.

It was now time to check on perhaps the most renowned Food Scientist published today. Author of On Food and Cooking, and The Curious Cook: More kitchen Science and Lore:, Harold McGee. What does Harold say?

Drum roll please….

Mr. McGee ALSO says its okay to wash mushrooms, after all they are 90% water already. A few seconds of rinse is OK. It does NOT effect taste or texture.

So, I do not know about you but I feel that the evidence is overwhelming and I will rinse away with impunity! That is, unless I am in someone else’s kitchen and they scream: “Don’t run them under water”!

Thanks for reading and as always,

ABC “Always Be Cooking”

Chef Rob