The wet method of cooking mushrooms

[digbyfox]

I filmed in a restaurant in the middle of Burgundy that specialises in mushrooms - Auberge de L'Artre. The chef there, Francis, knew more about cooking mushrooms than, well, most... Here's his technique: put your chopped mushrooms into a dry pan, quickly cook off the moisture moving them constantly (like a wok chef), then add tons of butter, a dash of salt, cook without burning the butter. Boom. Crazy delicious.

[WhispCommanderComics]

I actually just wash the mushrooms off and throw ALL of the mushrooms in the pan dry because of how much water is in the mushrooms. I’ve noticed that most of the common ones that you get in the little cartons in the grocery stores will typically just spill out of all their water and will use that to stop sticking and burning.

[floripaspbr]

No idea about mushrooms but eggplants work in a similar fashion: when you first add oil to sauteé eggplant it gets absorbed almost immediately but as the eggplants cook it "returns" the oil back to the pan. Took me a couple of tries and a very angry Brazilian mom to tell me why my eggplants were always so oily lol.

[alexandragatto]

I think the water trick fails when it's done as you described, using water as a 1-to-1 replacement for oil - you need far less, JUST enough to keep the mushrooms from sticking and to coax them into giving up their own moisture. Using a very sparing amount eliminates the issue of having to wait for all of that surplus water to evaporate and you can move on to the oil very quickly. Drier is better!

[escanor]

As an experienced home cook and being a french dude, when I'm cooking mushrooms I'm starting with the mushrooms by themselves in the pan on medium heat, no need to add anything because they contain the water already.
Only after I got rid of a decent amount of their water contained inside, I'm adding a little bit of butter WITH the oil ! The oil has a higher smoke point than butter and is going to prevent the butter form burning. The butter is interesting here because it's gonna help get a nice color and add a nutty flavor (what we call in french beurre noisette).
Then for example, after mushrooms have shrinked decently, I'm gonna add some fresh diced garlic and cilantro or parsley (according to your tastes) 3 min before the end (be careful with garlic because it doesn't like high temperature and will become black and bitter if not used properly). The most common mistake is that people are not patient and wanna do everything fast. But good cooking takes time and patience and often the best results are achieved with low temperature and patience (you get also to keep all the good vitamins). Of course sometime you need medium to high temperatures to obtain the "Maillard reaction" (crust and caramelization), but it has to be controlled and monitored carefully. keep in mind also that Mushrooms are acting like little "sponges". That's precisely why they go perfectly with recipes like beef stews etc, (what we call in french : "plats en sauce" literally "dishes with/in sauce")

[adamninezero]

I'm not classicaly trained, so take my advice with a huge pinch of salt(!), but I think I found a pretty solid way of cooking mushrooms back when I cooked an obscene amount of "full english" breakfasts in a busy British pub. I found cooking evenly sliced mushrooms in a third of their volume of water with a pinch of salt, pepper and sugar would produce this gorgeous and umami-filled mushroom "broth", which would then turn into a sort of concentraited mushroom syrup once cooked further, then once they were cooked down to that stage and the syrup was thick and just barely clinging to the mushrooms then I'd then turn the heat up to high and saute them in a little butter very quickly to colour them to a deep mohogany colour. They were a little "rubbery" in texture like how you experienced Adam, but for me, the flavour was more than worth that sacrifice.

[baumstanz]

When you cover the pan with a lid for two minutes, you can very quickly make them push out their own water, remove the lid and evaporate it quickly without adding any extra water. I think that way you get a higher core temperature more quickly, which is why it works

[Bareego]

Well, I use the anti water trick. I slice all the mushrooms and give those slices some time to dry (from a few hours to a day in the fridge). It makes the spongy things inside the mushroom more kind of brittle and they seem to absorb less water, also they have less water in them to start with. Remember your slice of bread, it's like you let it dry out a bit, as if it went a little bit stale. You get more flavorsome roasted mushrooms that way and you don't have to cook them as long. It's similar to frying a steak, you want to pat down the steak to make it dry, it'll have a much nicer crust then.Use oil, but use somewhat dried mushroom slices. Faster, more tastier, and less oil absorbed. This also works with onions, slice them thinly and dry them a bit. You can thank me later.

[MrMelty]

I'm curious how my method works with store-bought mushrooms, but for fresh foraged mushrooms, I've learned to heat them in a dry pan until a little after the water comes out, then add oil (specifically butter) and finish. This works fantastically for porcini, which is pretty similar to a giant button mushroom. I usually end up with nicely crisped slices.

[rana-rqon]

I've started just throwing them in a dry pan with some salt. I find they don't actually stick that much, and the flavour I get from them is INCREDIBLE! The texture is fine for me..

[ComfortableTool]

Personally for me, I absolutely love the dense meatiness you get when you boil the mushrooms and all their flavour concentrates because they shrink to be so small. It's great with whole mushrooms, add whatever spices and flavors you want and finish with some butter or olive oil.

[miabussell]

"Everybody gets things wrong sometimes, but the French culinary establishment is often both wrong and snooty about it, which is a punchable combination."
I am home, Adam.

[Procrasti...]

Holy macaroni - 10 minutes and not one loose sentence. 100% informative. You have a new subscriber

[imaginitivity]

An alternative is to semi dry the mushrooms before using them. I usually leave foraged mushrooms in kitchen towel in the fridge for a week or so prior to use. I find the flavour is intensified and there's less fluid in the pan to worry about

[lorenzn]

Here is what I figured out: You can also add salt very early. This helps to draw moisture out of the mushrooms. Remember that mushrooms are ~90% water. Unlike the water method you cook for a shorter time and so they end up less leathery. And unlike the traditional method you usually don't need to add more oil because at that stage the water starts to come out. Just cook until the water is evaporated and then some of the oil comes out and you can brown them. I noticed that this works better the riper / softer they are (when their heads are mostly open)

[adamc]

If you do the dry method with a bit of salt, they release their water much faster. So I usually just do a ton of mushrooms and some salt in a dry pan and the thermal interface is there pretty quickly. I didn't even realize people brown mushrooms in oil because they're just so tasty already, but I also know pretty much nothing of cooking and this is the only cooking channel I watch lol.

[JacKAsterisK]

I've noticed this intuitively too. I wasn't sure why I preferred to traditionally cook mushrooms, but I felt when I used the water method they were too dense. Thank you for the explanation, it always makes me a better cook to understand the underlying mechanisms!

[liamfinch]

I have been dry frying mushrooms for years. Cooking in this way concentrates the flavour. The mushrooms are are actually steaming in their own juices - delicious!

[rhinowizard]

I eat sauteed mushrooms almost every day, there are some things Adam got wrong here. Here are my 4 tips for the most delicious, juicy, carmelized mushrooms you have ever had. (Dont sautee them in water).
1. Cutting them in much larger peices (For Crimini and Baby Bella I almost always do halves) and starting with a very hot pan will allow you to get a beautiful browned color (Maillard reaction) on the outside while not shrinking the mushroom too much and keeping the center juicy, tender, and flavorful. Add the oil first and wait until it spits when your throw a drop of water into the pan to put them in. Putting mushrooms in a cold pan and adding cold oil will never give you the best results.
2. You should wait until right before you take them out to season them, as Adam mentioned the salt aggresively dehydrates the mushrooms and results in a pan full of water and a leathery shrunken mushroom.
3. I would use a lot less oil here then Adam is using - you really only need enough to barely coat the bottom of the pan to eliminate sticking and transfer heat (on a stainless steel chefs pan). The mushrooms may appear more "dry" in the pan then normal veggies but that is only because the oil has been absorbed into the very outer layers of the mushroom. When you pour them out of the pan and you get a slick of oil (9:55) its a good sign you overdid it.
4. Don't stir them so much! I see Adam is constantly stirring here, which is disturbing the browning process by flipping the mushrroms and allowing the hot sides to cool off before the browning reaction has occured. You want to give the mushrooms a chance to develop the crispy layer, which won't happen if you're constantly stirring the pan.
5. Using these steps, you should be able to sautee beautifuly browned but still juicy mushrooms in less than 5 minutes. It takes less time in a hotter pan.

[nairdacnalbel]

i agreed with the problems you had with the water method, so i modified it slightly. i use far less water, and i cover and steam the mushrooms, this partially collapses the shrooms, then i add oil to brown, and since the steaming only half cooks them, they don't get nearly as firm.
i work in a kitchen, on a griddle, so i use a squirt of water from the bottle i have on hand (a couple tablespoons), and i put the griddle cover lid thing over it while i get the rest of the sandwich going.