SC - mushrooms

[Jehanne Argentee]

At 10:02 PM 3/22/00 EST, you wrote:
>In a message dated 3/22/00 6:45:09 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
>Seton1355 at aol.com writes:
>
><< I peel my mushrooms because the dirt comes off with the peel and
"washing" 
>/ 
> rubbing them is a pain.
> Phillipa Seton >>
>
>Commercially purchased mushrooms should never be washed. The are grown in 
>STERILE medium and they should only be wiped with a cloth to remove any bits 
>clinging to them. Washing them causes them to soak up large amounts of
liquid 
>which is not a good thing.

I have to disagree with this. I cook mushrooms on a weekly basis, and have
never had any problems with button mushrooms soaking up liquid when they
were washed. Call me lazy, but if I'm cleaning several pounds of mushrooms,
I'm not going to wipe them one by one with a cloth.

IIRC, Gourmet magazine also did a study on this by weighing out a pound of
mushrooms and a pound of broccoli. They then washed them both, and
reweighed them. The mushrooms had gained the same amount of weight as the
broccoli, a ounce or two, most likely due to not being dried off. No one
accuses broccoli of soaking up water when washed!

On the other hand, I've never had to wash my shitake mushrooms as I grow
them myself and they are spotless when they come off the log, so I have no
idea how mushrooms other than buttons take to being washed.

Yours in Service, 

Jehanne

p.s. Anyone in florida know if we can grow morels down here? I'm tempted to
start a patch...
__________________________________________
NetZero - Defenders of the Free World
Get your FREE Internet Access and Email at
http://www.netzero.net/download/index.html