Sunday, January 29, 2012

HowTo: Prepare 冬菇 - Chinese Dried Shiitake Mushroom

冬菇 - Chinese Dried Shiitake Mushroom, is an essential ingredient in Chinese cuisine. Its use range from common stir-fry noodles to exotic dishes with Abalone 鮑魚. This post will provide instructions in how to prepare it for dishes used in stir-fry or steaming but not really applicable other uses such as boiling (You are always welcome to adventure into the wild...)

Why do the ones in restaurant tastes so much better than mine!?:

  1. You used crappy mushrooms (bad source, can't fix)
  2. You didn't follow this recipe - the mushroom although strongly flavoured, is not enough for it to be "tasty". This recipe is to allow you to make it more "complete"

How to identify good 冬菇?:

  1. The smell - what you smell from it has strong correlation to how it tastes. So just think how it should taste like
  2. The size - not too big (I find large ones less tastey), nor too small (for softer texture). 
  3. The stem - the stems are very tough, so it's not beneficial if it's too large (they charge per pound)
  4. The look - It's natural for it to have cracks and it should be a brownish colour

Ingredients:
6-8 冬菇 Dried Chinese Shiitake Mushrooms  (Must use dried ones, buy from Chinese groceries)
Sugar
Salt
Sesame oil
Potato Starch

Preparation Instructions:
  1. Clean and soak the mushrooms for at least 4 hours
  2. Remove from water and clip the stem of the mushroom away using a pair of kitchen scissors
    • (Its roots are very tough, unless you're using it for some other dish -might make a post for that- just toss it away)
    • The water can also be used in other dishes, e.g. use it for cooking rice
    1. Add around 1/2 tsp of sugar, a pinch of salt to the mushrooms and mix well
    2. Add just less than 1 tsp of sesame oil 
    3. Add around 1 tsp of potato starch (you can play around with this amount)
    4. Mix well
    5. Steam for 20 mins+
    key: The starch will allow the mushroom to be smoother than usual and keeps the flavour held in the mushroom instead of watering it out. You can play around with the amount yourself to figure a good balance. It depends on how wet your mushrooms are.

    Cooking Instructions:
    After the preparation work, the mushrooms are essentially cooked. This means you can store it in the fridge and use it another day. Since the time it takes to soak the mushroom is so time consuming, you should either soak it over night or make enough for several dishes (e.g. some might be for steaming, some for stir fry). If it's stir fry, you can slice it. 

    Enjoy!

    Posted by at 5:00 PM
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