Growing and Using Mushrooms in Recipes

As a personal chef, I use many exotic and hard-to-find ingredients in many of my signature dishes. One of my favorite ingredients to use is a shiitake mushroom. These tasty mushrooms are the stars in my signature dish, mushroom risotto. This type of mushroom adds an earthy undertone to the creamy taste of the risotto. My clients go absolutely crazy for this dish and is also my most requested to date.

Lately, I have been going through an abundance of shiitake mushrooms in many other dishes that I make such as tomato sauces, stir-fries and beef-based sauces. This has caused me to run to the farmers market constantly in order to assure my customers that they are receiving the freshest ingredients in my dishes and has been costing me valuable time. I began looking for an alternative and have found that dried shiitake mushrooms work just as well and there is no difference in the taste and they have longer shelf life then fresh mushrooms.

A fellow chef that I have worked with in the past invited me to his new restaurant for its grand opening. I could not wait to try many of his new dishes and was looking forward to tasting his sauce with dried porcini mushrooms. When the day arrived for the grand opening, my chef friend invited me on a tour of his new restaurant, and of course the most important part of the building, the kitchen. I was amazed at all the fresh produce that he was using in all of the dishes. He informed me that all of the produce, even down to the mushrooms, he and his wife had grown themselves. I was now curious about how they had managed to grow mushrooms. The chef informed me that he had ordered a mushroom-growing kit from Oak Hill Mushrooms.

After all the delicious food that night I went home to order my very own mushroom growing kits. By growing my own mushrooms at home I have saved money. Growing these wonderful fungi was easier then I had thought and give me great joy telling everyone that I grew them all by myself. My friends are so impressed by this that they are now growing them also and cannot get over how fun it is. I now give these amazing mushroom grow kits as gifts and get many thanks from my friends and loved ones.