No-Fail Tips and Tricks on How to Cook Oyster Mushrooms

How to Cook Oyster Mushrooms

Oyster mushrooms have it all. Everything from delicious taste to benefits that can revolutionize your health is added to your diet. The best part is that they are rather easy to cook and thus are always a favorite amongst people who are trying to up their cooking game. They come in all sorts of colorful shapes and sizes and the only thing common amongst all these varieties is simply the fact that they are always a great experience to cook and consume.

Today, we will be looking closely at blue oyster mushrooms. There are several reasons for that as well. Oyster mushrooms are an incredibly popular type of mushroom due to the fact that they are rather easy to grow. In general, mushrooms require conditions that different from plants. They like damp and dark environments with good airflow so that they can grow to their fullest potential. However, even a slight miscalibration of temperature or humidity can adversely affect their potential to grow. Oyster mushrooms on the other hand are a completely different case because they are extremely resilient. This means that they will still thrive in environments that are not perfectly calibrated to their requirements.

Consequently, they are extremely popular amongst people who are trying to grow mushrooms for the first time, becoming basically a great example of starter mushrooms. On top of that, they have a powerful savory taste that can often be used to replace meat and dishes with seafood. For people with health conditions that force them to stop consuming meat, oyster mushrooms can be a great alternative that doesn’t give much up in terms of taste. In fact, there are mushroom grow kits out there that make the process of growing mushrooms even easier than before. There is a wealth of options to choose from, such as blue oyster grow kit, pink oyster grow kit, and lion's mane grow kit. Basically, they give you a pre-made colony that you can start to grow mushrooms in.

Before we start delving into how to cook mushrooms, let’s talk about the advantages of consuming mushrooms first.

Can Prevent Heart Disease

Heart disease is one of the most common reasons of death in the age of today. The worst part is that cardiovascular diseases have been on an upwards trend for the past decade around the world. More and more people are being diagnosed with them across the world. The only way we can get out of this negative trend is to start moving towards a diet that is more organically complete. The more fried chicken you put into your body, the more you will move towards heart disease. In fact, the presence of Beta-glucans in blue oyster mushrooms can promote a lower level of cholesterol in one’s body. There have been studies on human subjects that have shown that consuming blue oyster mushrooms helped promote lower blood sugar and blood pressure. If you have lower blood sugar and blood pressure, then you can expect yourself to not be at risk of any heart-related disease down the line.

Anti-tumor Properties, Improved Gut Health, and Lowers Inflammation

There has been research on animals that has shown a positive correlation between the use of blue oyster mushrooms and anti-tumor effects. This could be a real gamechanger because tumors are issues that can quite easily prove to be fatal. Moreover, research on rats has uncovered the possibility that oyster mushrooms curb the growth of pathogenic bacteria and promoted the growth of short-chain fatty acids in the gut. This means that it can help people who have chronic issues in their gut and have had a weak digestive system due to this. The presence of antioxidants in oyster mushrooms also help with inflammation as well as they act as anti-inflammation agents. Inflammation in the body can most likely be caused due to auto-immune disorders in which your body starts to attack tissue that is healthy. Also, you could have inflammation if you have been exposed to toxins which could be possible if you work in some sort of industrial setting or live in a place that might have a lot of pollution. With air quality only declining each day, inflammation has been predicted to increase in the average human body. Oyster mushrooms can stand as a shield of defense against this attack as well.

Immune System

One of the disadvantages of coddling your immune system and never exposing yourself to any bacteria or virus of sorts is that your immune system gets weak because it has not really been ‘trained in fighting’. This is why the coronavirus ravaged Western countries while lesser developed countries had lower infection rates due to the people having stronger immune systems. Naturally, the next step is to strengthen the immune system itself. Blue oyster mushrooms are also known to have immune-supportive effects that allow them to help promote a stronger immune system. This is due to pleuran, a type of beta-glucan found in blue oyster mushrooms. Studies have shown that people that were given plueran with other substances were able to fight infections better, a classic example of a strengthened immune system.

Blue Oyster Mushrooms Are a Jack-Of-All-Trades Ingredient

Now that we have shown all the numerous health benefits of consuming mushrooms, here are some culinary benefits as well. They are a very versatile ingredient that can be cooked in a variety of ways, all of which seem to bring out a different facet of the vast character of mushrooms. They can be part of soups and pasta. You can just as easily add them to egg dishes or roast them. In some dishes, they will take center stage due to their distinctive taste while in others they will have a more supplementary role. The possibilities are endless.

Let’s start with how to fry oyster mushrooms.

How to Fry Oyster Mushrooms

First, you will need to clean them if you have grown them yourself. The only thing that you need to do is to take a towel and wipe all the sides of the mushrooms. Make sure that you don’t apply too much strength as they are quite fragile. Washing them is not recommended as they might start to fall apart.

Take a pan, put it over medium heat, and add some olive oil to it. Wait a few minutes before the oil has reached a certain temperature. Now, you need to take the mushrooms and cut them into small but even parts. Cutting them up into smaller parts helps with cooking as there is a greater surface area to cook. Making sure that they are evenly sized means that they will also be evenly cooked.

Add the mushrooms into the frying pan and wait a few minutes before they start to take color. The color that they will take is essentially a brown one that is characteristic of anything that is being fried. The more the mushrooms are fried, the crispier they will be. However, you need to make sure that you don’t burn the mushrooms themselves. If you cut them into parts that are too small, you crispy mushrooms might start to feel too crispy, almost like a pack of chips.

Once you have your perfectly fried mushrooms, transfer them to the serving plate. The pan that is still hot needs to have the butter, garlic, parsley (and any other ingredient that you see fit to use) added to it. They will reach a point of being melted and at that precise moment, you can add them to the serving plate as well.

Different Ways of Serving Oyster Mushrooms

You can take some toast with some melted cheese and add the cooked mushrooms to them. The toast provides a great equalizer for the exotic taste of the mushrooms and balances the dish well. If your pasta seems to be a bit boring for your taste, you can always add some mushrooms to it to really add some character to the whole mix. It gives your pasta more variety and adds something that will always have a great taste. If you’re feeling a bit special in the morning, you can even add the mushrooms to the side of scrambled eggs. It is sure to class up your breakfast! Overall, these mushrooms work great as a side dish that can complement the taste of the dish, coming out with a more rounded dish.

It is a mystery that people still only seem to think of mushrooms as some sort of plant. When in fact they are a kind of fungi that has requirements entirely different from those of plants. However, in recent years, with people focusing more and more on health, mushrooms have really come to the fore as a valuable addition to people’s diet that can not only augment their health but also be a welcome change for their taste buds. This is backed up by the numerous health benefits that research over the years has uncovered.