How to Pick Fresh Mushrooms

Video Transcript

"Hi, Christi Ferretti with Expert Village. I want to give you a few little tips about selecting mushrooms in a grocery store. This is actually the mother of all mushrooms, the Portobello. Great for vegetarians. Its important when you look at mushrooms, especially in this variety. And they make little baby bellos. A little smaller version of the same thing. But you can see the gills. If you pick these up in the grocery store and they are packaged, and they are covered in saran wrap and they're like this. And you can't see those undersides. You never know, you have to trust your produce guy. But in this case you want to see that when you brush your finger across these, they kind of bounce a little bit, they are separated. They are not wet, and they are not darkened in color or orange in color. And you also want to look at this bottom section of the stem where its been cut. Kind of like the asparagus. You don't want to see them cracking and drying in there. You want to see that its moist. You can give it a little squeeze. And see that its got some bounce in it. And that's important when selecting a good mushroom. Portobello's are easy, because you can do all that to them. When you look at just button mushrooms like this one, you don't see the gills really to the end. So you don't have that test to look at, but you do have the ability to kind of check the stems. Make sure that they are not dried out and cracked. And you also want to make sure that when you are buying mushrooms, you are not looking at things that are pre-cut and thinking that you are going to keep them very long. As soon as you wash a mushroom, or as soon as you slice anything really. You are jeopardizing the integrity of it for a really long time. So in this case, this mushrooms been cut, and it pretty much starts to go bad. So when you buy these things for convenience, you may be saving time, but you may not be saving money in the long run. So this is what you want to look for. A nice even color. Nice soft gills on the bottom. And again a nice squishy stem, not dried and cracked."