I received this email from a fermentation experimentalist named Amber, about a mushroom condiment she fermented:
I thought you might find interesting a project I did last summer. I was trying to figure out a substitute for soy sauce. With it being mushroom season and me being
highly influenced by the constant fermentation projects happening at my house, I thought a fermented mushroom sauce could turn out really good with a similar flavor to soy sauce.
I harvested big bags full of hawks wing mushrooms. I thought their savory flavor would be adequate. I’m interested what flavors other mushrooms would bring to a sauce. I added fresh ginger, garlic, seaweed, and maybe horseradish. and poured a salt brine over it. I used some extra brine from some pickled beets I had going.
It turned out amazing!! Very much the flavor I was hoping for. It would have been closer without the beet juice added, but it definitely couldn’t be considered lessened by it. My brain/stomach is going crazy imaging how the same combination would taste if I was using Lobster mushrooms instead of hawks wings!
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This is absolutely great (as was the story about searching for koji in Paraguay).
I’ve lacto-fermented some chicken-of-the-woods fungus in it’s own salted juices so am intrigued to see how that turns out (only been going 2 weeks).
Am currently soaking some sweet chestnuts to inoculate with some koji I got from the Nordic food lab as would love to make a 100% wild/foraged miso. It makes me wonder if some of the more local members of the Aspergillus genus could be used??? Some, of course are bad for your health – spores sprouting in lungs and other horror film scenarios!
I’ve made koji with wild aspergillus by wrapping cooked rice in fresh corn husks. See The Art of Fermentation for detailed information.
I fermented some oyster mushrooms a cople of years ago with very good results. I used nothing but salt and allowed them to ferment in a mason jar for a few days, like kimchee. They were delicious!
Hello, this weekend is good for me, for the reason that this occasion i am reading this impressive
educational post here at my house.
Hi everyone came across this page on a Google search I did about fermented mushrooms just out of pure curiosity. Found something revelant:
In Hannah Glasse’s cookbook from the mid 1700s, all of her “catchup” recipes had mushrooms as a main ingredient.
(https://books.google.com/books?id=8xJgAAAAcAAJ&dq=to%20make%20catchup%20hannah%20glasse&pg=PA309#v=onepage&q&f=false)
I guess “mushroom ketchup” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushroom_ketchup) was the main ketchup back then. Bottles of this stuff would keep unpasteurized for years, but I think even the ones that didn’t use beer/wine were probably just more of a brining/curing thing rather than actual fermentation? Interesting though.
Hi..I have some honey mushrooms (amarilla mielea) and I wonder if it would be possible to lacto ferment those..