Every once in a while our local grocery store will offer a super sale on mushrooms. The catch is they’re not the most fresh, so they need to be used within a day or two (the same day being the best option).


Recently they were marked down so low that it seemed ridiculous not to buy LOTS. So I did. But when I got them home, my giddy feelings of grocery-shopping-victory were instantly squelched by the panic resulting from my what-the-heck-am-I-gonna-DO-with-these? feelings.

Thank goodness for the wealth of information available on the Internet, right? It just so happened that Linda, of www.foodstoragemoms.com knew exactly what the heck to do with these.

I’ll digress a little, first, though. You might be thinking, “Well, why don’t you just freeze them?” Good question. Fresh mushrooms technically can be frozen. However, when thawed, they will be very mushy and nothing like fresh mushrooms — think frozen food. If you want to freeze them, you must clean and saute them first. These are best used in a heated dish or soup.


But I didn’t have the time or inclination to sauté 5 pounds of sliced mushrooms. So after tucking a carton into the fridge to use in dinner that night, I went to the Internet for a better idea.

Now, back to what Linda had to say. Dehydrate them, she advised. They’ll turn leathery to crispy in about 5 hours at 125 degrees. I like to dehydrate for a longer time at a lower temperature (119 degrees to preserve more of the enzymes).


Now you could stop here and just package these up in airtight containers and store them in a cool dark place. And voila, you now have mushrooms any time you want for your soups, stews, casseroles, etc. But Linda suggests one more step: blending them in a high-powered blender to make mushroom powder.

Why bother making mushroom powder, you wonder? Here’s what she says: There are lots of uses out there for it. First of all, if you have anti-mushroom eaters in the house, you can sneak a little of these superior vegetable in to their diet with them even knowing it. They contain lots of fiber, B vitamins, and a powerful antioxidant called selenium, which helps to support the immune system and prevent damage to cells and tissues. Dr. Fuhrman says mushrooms are one of the healthiest foods we can eat, so it’s worth the trouble to figure out how to get more of them in to the diet.


In conclusion, besides being a tricky way to get more mushrooms into the diet, and besides the powder lasting a long time (which is a very budget-friendly thing to do when it comes to future-use storage) mushroom powder is a very versatile ingredient! For instance, add it to:

• gravy (just before serving)
• spaghetti sauce (just before serving)
• soups or stews (just before serving)
• meatloaf mixture
• any casserole where mushrooms would work well (a breakfast casserole, for instance)