How to Chop Mushrooms

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Anne Appra and I'm back to give you a few more catering tips. Mushrooms are such a wonderful and delicious addition to any recipe. But there are some tricks to finding the right ones. You want to look for a mushroom that's attached to the cap, it's got a nice firm texture and hopefully doesn't have too many blemishes on them. A little tip; if you do have your mushrooms with a little bit of blemish is I take a moistened paper towel and I just rub the tops of it and it gets the worst of it off and you can do several at a time. If you're making a marinade or a soup or say a stew or what I'm going to make a little bit later is a vegetable saute. You don't have to worry so much about rubbing each one off, because they're going to cook down quite a bit. Here's a tip I have for cutting lots of mushrooms fairly quickly. Going to take a sharp chef's knife and you're going to cut your mushroom in half. I like to line them up against each other cause it's less work. I'm just going to make nice consistent cuts, so they look really pretty. You can tell that mushrooms are good and healthy by the firmness. These are nice and firm. They have good color. These are chanterelles. Excuse me shiitakes. Chanterelles have some beautiful textures to them and a different flavor. So it depends on what you're going for. If you want a really nutty flavor, I would go for say a chanterelles or the shiitake like these here. They have a really rich full bodied flavor. There's also enoki which are used in Japanese foods. They're skinny and really fun for displays and to use in spring rolls which is a dish I'll plan on making in a future catering tips 101. These ones are destined for my very famous stuffing mixture with all vegetables which I'm going to be talking about shortly. There we go. Beautiful mushrooms. I'm going to give them just one more extra little cut so that they'll cook down a little bit quicker. There we go. Chopped mushrooms 101."