Gourmet wood-lovers
Enoki
Flammulina filiformis
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
- Enokitake
- Golden needle mushroom
- Velvet shank (wild form, F. velutipes)
In the kitchen
Flavour
Mild and slightly fruity; the cultivated white form is delicate, the wild brown form deeper.
Texture
Long, thin, crisp stems that stay firm with brief cooking and turn slippery if overdone.
In the kitchen
Added at the end of hot pots, soups and stir-fries so a few seconds of heat keeps the crunch. Trim the clumped base before separating the strands.
How it is cultivated
Substrate
Sterilised supplemented hardwood sawdust in bottles or bags, grown cold and in a carbon-dioxide-rich container so the stems draw out long, pale and thin.
Fruiting temperature
8-12°C (46-54°F) for the long white form
Humidity
80-90% relative humidity
How it is grown
Supplemented sawdust in bottles, cold, with restricted air exchange
Time to first harvest
Roughly 2 to 3 months
How much, how long
Dense clumps of long stems
Difficulty at home
Advanced. The pale, long-stemmed shop form needs cold and controlled carbon dioxide, which is hard without a dedicated space; the wild-type brown form is easier but looks nothing like the shop product.
What is worth knowing about it
The familiar white shop enoki is grown cold and in the dark under high carbon dioxide, which is what forces the trademark long thin stems and small caps. The species cultivated for food is now recognised as the Asian Flammulina filiformis, split by DNA from the European wild velvet shank, F. velutipes.
Elsewhere on the site
Sources
- Wikipedia, Flammulina velutipes and Flammulina filiformis
- Stamets, Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms
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