Gourmet wood-lovers
Beech mushroom, shimeji
Hypsizygus tessulatus
Never eat a wild-foraged mushroom you identified from a website, this one included. Wild mushroom misidentification can be fatal, and no page can rule a specimen IN. This reference is about cultivated and shop-bought mushrooms only: species you buy, or grow from bought spawn, where there is nothing to identify. To identify anything wild, consult a qualified local expert holding the actual specimen, never a description on a screen.
Also sold as
- Buna-shimeji (brown)
- Bunapi (white)
- Hypsizygus marmoreus
In the kitchen
Flavour
Bitter and unpleasant raw, turning nutty and sweet with a shellfish note once cooked through.
Texture
Small firm caps on crunchy stems, grown and sold in tight clusters.
In the kitchen
Always cook it: the raw bitterness disappears with heat and it becomes nutty. Separate the cluster, keep the pieces whole, and add to stir-fries, soups and braises.
How it is cultivated
Substrate
Sterilised supplemented hardwood sawdust; a slow coloniser that is grown commercially in bottles.
Fruiting temperature
13-18°C (55-64°F)
Humidity
90-95% relative humidity
How it is grown
Supplemented sawdust in bottles or bags
Time to first harvest
Several months, after a long colonisation
How much, how long
Dense clusters
Difficulty at home
Advanced. A long incubation and cool fruiting make it more demanding than most gourmets and largely a commercial crop.
What is worth knowing about it
Sold in the tight brown or white clusters labelled shimeji. It is genuinely unpalatable raw and pleasant cooked, which is worth knowing before a first taste. The name marmoreus is still widely used for the same commercial mushroom.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Hypsizygus tessulatus
- Stamets, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
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