Recipes
Cooking with cultivated mushrooms
Real recipes for the species in our strain library. Crab cakes from lion's mane, vegan scallops from king trumpet, mushroom bacon from pink oyster. Each entry pairs back to the strains you'd grow to make it. Cross-link with SavedRecipe for full meal-planning workflow.
Dried Shiitake Dashi
5 ingredients. 90 minutes. The umami foundation of every Japanese broth.
Shiitake dashi is the vegan version of the classic Japanese kombu-katsuobushi dashi. The drying process intensifies shiitake's natural glutamates 3-5x, and a long cold-water soak followed by a gentle simmer produces a clear, deeply savory broth that powers miso soups, ramens, and braises. Make a quart, refrigerate it, and use it through the week.
Serves 8 · 5 min hands-on
Open recipe →
Maitake Tempura with Dashi Dipping Sauce
Dancing-mushroom in delicate batter, with the classic kombu-katsuobushi dipping sauce.
Maitake (Grifola frondosa) is the mushroom most natural to tempura. Its frilly hen-of-the-woods structure separates into perfect tempura-sized pieces with no knife work needed; the irregular surface holds batter beautifully; the natural earthy sweetness pairs with the lacy crisp of properly-cooked tempura batter. The two technical challenges in tempura are batter temperature (must be ice cold) and oil temperature (must be tightly held in the 340-360°F range). Cold batter hitting hot oil is what produces the iconic open lacy texture; warm batter produces dense crusts. The whole preparation is fast — under 30 minutes once you have the maitake and ingredients staged. Dashi is the universal Japanese stock made from kombu (kelp) and katsuobushi (dried bonito flakes). For tempura dipping you reduce dashi with soy and mirin to create tentsuyu, the standard tempura sauce. A version with shiitake-only dashi works for a vegetarian variant; the umami profile shifts but is still excellent.
Serves 4 · 30 min hands-on
Open recipe →
Mushroom Miso Ramen
A 35-minute weeknight ramen with a mushroom-miso broth that tastes like it simmered all day.
A proper tonkotsu broth takes 12 hours and a refrigerator full of pork bones. This is not that ramen. This is the weeknight version that uses dried mushrooms, kombu, and white miso to build a broth with comparable depth in 35 minutes — fast enough to make on a Tuesday after work, with enough complexity to feel like a real bowl rather than glorified instant noodles. The broth strategy is straightforward: rehydrate dried shiitake in stock with a piece of kombu (the umami pairing that defines Japanese broth-making), then strain and stir in white miso off-heat. Don't boil the miso — it kills the live cultures and turns the broth muddy. Stir-in temperature is around 180°F. The toppings are where you flex. Soft-boiled egg with a 7-minute soft yolk is non-negotiable. Beyond that: pan-seared fresh oyster or shiitake, blanched bok choy, scallions, nori, chile crisp. Build your own bowl. The recipe scales easily; the broth ratio is per-serving, not all-or-nothing.
Serves 4 · 30 min hands-on
Open recipe →