Homemade Mushroom Powder (or, What I Found Wandering Super H Mart)

This whole thing started because I cheated on a recipe.

A while back I made chili crisp. The recipe (credit Ian Fujimoto) calls for shiitake mushroom powder. I did not have shiitake mushroom powder. I made the chili crisp anyway, told myself it was fine (it was fine), and then spent the next few weeks quietly bothered that I’d skipped a whole ingredient. I wanted to know what it would’ve done.

It didn’t help that mushroom powder had been rattling around in my head for other reasons. Kush from Sorted Food (the chef, Kush Bhasin) has featured it on the “cheffy tricks” episodes and swears by it for the umami kick that a lot of his vegetarian dishes need. It’s the kind of thing that makes people think you did something clever when really you just kept a jar of ground-up mushrooms around. That’s my kind of trick. Low effort, high smug.

So I went looking for it at Super H Mart.

I did not find it. What I found instead was a very patient employee, a language barrier neither of us could fully get across, and a moment where we both just sort of laughed and gave up. No frustration, no big deal; sometimes you don’t share enough words to get to mushroom powder, and that’s okay. I thanked them the best I could and went to do what I do best in a grocery store I don’t fully understand, which is wander the aisles and touch things.

And that’s how I found the bag. Dried shiitakes, big bag, packaging I couldn’t read a word of. So I googled the picture on the front, as one does, decided it looked legit, saw it was eight dollars, and figured worth a try. Eight bucks to maybe make the cheffy trick myself instead of hunting for the pre-made version. Sold.

Here’s the part that surprised me. I opened the bag ready to slow-dry these things in the oven for a couple hours, because that’s what most of the internet tells you to do. I didn’t need to. These mushrooms were bone dry already, snappy and light, basically begging to be turned into dust. So I picked out all the broken and half pieces (the whole caps I’m saving; more on that in a second), dropped them into my little spice grinder, and let it rip.

That’s genuinely the whole method. Thirty, maybe forty seconds of solid grinding, a couple of pulses to catch the stragglers, and I had powder. I didn’t sieve it. I looked, decided nothing in there was big enough to bother me, and moved on with my life. Two full grinder bowls of dried mushrooms gave me enough to fill a half-cup Penzey’s jar (and yes, we recycle the Penzey’s jars around here; a good glass spice jar is not something you throw away in this house).

The rest of the mushrooms, the pretty whole ones, went into an airtight container in the pantry. Those are for a ramen or a stir fry or anything where I want to rehydrate them and eat them like mushrooms instead of dust.

So now I’ve got a jar of homemade umami sitting on the shelf looking very pleased with itself, and the only problem left is a good one: I need things to put it in. The chili crisp is getting a round two, obviously, this time done right (that post lands the 28th). After that I’m taking suggestions.

Notes

Keep it in an airtight jar somewhere cool and dark and it’ll hold its flavor for months. Mine’s in a recycled half-cup spice jar in the pantry, nowhere near the stove heat.

On uses: this stuff is basically a savory bomb you can sprinkle on almost anything. Into broths and soups, obviously. Rubbed onto meat before it hits the Kamado. Stirred into gravy or a pan sauce. On popcorn, on eggs, into a bowl of plain rice you’re trying to make less plain. And into chili crisp, where this all began.

And yes, since somebody always asks: this is just concentrated glutamate, which is the same thing that makes MSG work and the same thing your body makes plenty of on its own. If a jar of ground mushrooms doesn’t scare you (it shouldn’t), then MSG shouldn’t either. But that’s a fight for another post.

Best part of the whole project: one $8 bag gave me a full jar of powder and a container of whole mushrooms to cook with later. That’s a lot of dinner from one impulse buy and a failed conversation.

P.S. To whoever tried to help me find mushroom powder at Super H Mart: I never did find it, but I hope you got as good a laugh out of that as I did. You accidentally gave me a whole blog post.

P.P.S. If you’ve got a favorite way to use mushroom powder, send it my way. I’ve got half a cup of the stuff and a lot of ambition.

P.P.P.S. We really do recycle the Penzey’s jars. If you know, you know.