I see it written in recipes all the time: Don’t wash mushrooms because they act like sponges and soak up the water (which I guess is supposed to make for mushy mushrooms). Well, I’ve never believed it, and decided to do a test.
Here are 4 oz of crimini mushrooms, dry and straight from their package, weighed on my digital scale.
Then I put the mushrooms in a bowl of water for 10 minutes–way longer than they would be exposed to water while being rinsed.
Here are those same mushrooms, weighed after they soaked. In the picture the readout says 4 oz, but in the spirit of full disclosure, the readout did waffle between 4 oz and 4 1/8 oz. Now, I suppose if the mushrooms were open and their gills were exposed, water could have seeped into the cap, but that’s not the same thing as the mushroom itself soaking up water.
According to my teenage daughter, I’m wrong about a lot of things these days, so it was nice to be right about my mushrooms 🙂
Posted by Tiffiny Felix
