Sadly I was way too busy at work yesterday to do a #mushroommonday post. But I have a mushroom jerky experiment today.
I found a store that sells giant king oyster mushrooms aka Pleurotus eryngii.
These things are huge with a thick fat stem but almost no cap. I think they are farmed to be like this in a high C02 environment to get more meat on the stem.
I figured this would be a perfect test subject to turn into jerky since there is so much dense and consistent mushroom material to work with. It is pretty solid and not foamy like most other mushrooms.
I sliced them into suitable sizes.
Then I threw a bunch of spices including the guancho pepper from above into a soup pan. Other spices include punjab tandori curry as well as garlic, soy sauce, cayenne and lime juice.
Here are all the pieces of mushroom in the spicy soup. I let them boil for around 30 minutes to make sure the spices soaked into the mushrooms and they got nice and soft. Towards the end I pulled some cooked mushrooms out to test the taste and add more or less spices.
Finally here is the result of the mushroom jerky after dehydration. They are actually the perfect texture for jerky. At first they are crunchy then they begin to melt away as you chew them and the spices taste amazing. I was worried they would be too tough to eat but it turns out they are easier to eat than real beef jerky since you don't end up with any chewy fat pieces.
I got the idea to turn these mushrooms into jerky from a hot pot restaurant.
At this restaurant you basically order things to throw into the hot pot then fish them out and eat them after they are cooked. I ordered this mushroom sampler and the king oysters were amazing in the soup. You can also see crimini, wood ear and enokitake. I think I may have found my favorite mushroom jerky material to work with. Next I might try a teriyake recipe.
Happy #mushroommonday on a Tuesday :-)