SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS RECIPE | how to cook shiitake mushrooms #healthy #food

Hello my friends, it's Dani and today I'm showing you how to cook shiitake mushrooms. This is a simple sautéed shiitake mushroom recipe that is so easy to make and insanely delicious. Shiitake mushrooms are one of the most popular cultivated variety of specialty mushrooms, so you can usually find them right in your grocery store. Not only are they packed with vitamins and minerals, but they have this beautiful, delicious earthy, umami flavor and a really meaty texture. So they are not only nutritious, but extremely tasty as well. Sometimes you'll find them pre-sliced at the grocery store, so they'll look just like this, in which case you would not have to do any preparation. But if you're buying your shiitake mushrooms whole, they're going to look like this. And you want to make sure that they're nice and firm and plump. You don't want them to be slimy or to have any wrinkles on them. Now, just note that shiitake mushrooms can be a bit pricey. One pound, which is what I have here, costs $10.99 at our local grocery store. So definitely a little bit of a treat, but if it's an option, they are 100% worth it. Now to prepare the mushrooms, the first thing that I do is just trim the stems off. They tend to be a bit woody, and so they're really not edible, but you don't have to discard them. You could save them along with some other veggie scraps and make a really rich, beautiful vegetable broth. Then just to make sure they're nice and clean, I like to wipe them down with a wet cloth. You could run them under some cold water, but if you do that, do it quickly because mushrooms are very porous and you don't want them to become waterlogged. Then from here, I'm just going to slice them up and set them aside. Now for this recipe, I'm also going to dice up a little bit of white onion, just a couple of tablespoons, and then a couple cloves of garlic as well. Okay, to cook my shiitake mushrooms, I've got a nice big cast iron skillet heating up over a medium heat. I love the cast iron skillet. I use it almost on a daily basis. It's just a great, sturdy pan. It gets a nice browning on the mushrooms. They're super affordable and they last a lifetime, but you could use any saute pan that you love or that you have on hand. Once the oil is hot, I'm going to toss in the mushrooms and then just let them start to cook. I let them go for about three or four minutes, and then I'm going to gently give them a stir, and overall, these mushrooms are going to cook somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes, and I'm going to stir them every couple of minutes, every three to four minutes, so you want to give them time to brown and set up in the pan, but you also want to keep them moving. Now, the mushrooms have a lot of liquid in them, so that liquid is going to be evaporating out of the mushrooms, and that's what we want to happen because we need that liquid to go away to get a nice browning on the mushroom. They've been in the pan for about 15 minutes, and they're just about ready to be finished off. So what I do from here is I add in a couple of tablespoons of diced onion, that chopped up garlic, a big pinch of sea salt, and a little bit of black pepper. Stir that around one more time, and I let this go just for about two or three minutes, and that's why I like to cut the onion and the garlic so small because we're really just using them to finish, so they're not only adding flavor, but they're adding a bit of texture as well. These are looking so good. From here, I'm just going to shut the heat off, let them cool down a bit, and I love to finish them with just a little bit of chopped scallion, just to add a pop of color. Shiitake mushrooms have this rich, deep, earthy, umami flavor, and this really meaty texture. They are, of course, delicious just as they are eaten on their own. Sometimes I love to just toss them on top of a salad. You can mix them into your eggs, put them in your favorite Buddha bowl or grain bowl. I mean, the options are truly endless, but I do want to invite you to give them a try at least once because they are to die for. If you enjoyed this video, please take a moment to like the video, subscribe to the channel, and share this with anybody else you know who wants to make healthy eating easy. Thank you so much for watching. I'm Dani Spees, and I'll see you back here next time with some more clean and deliciousness. Cheers!