Kitchen Project - Mushroom Salt

We've been trying to grow oyster mushrooms for a few months now, and have been happy to harvest quite a few flushes. The oyster mushroom stems are a little tough though, so I've been cooking the caps fresh, and drying the stems. For the most part, those dried stems have gone to make soup. But one day I was using some vanilla salt, and it occurred to me that mushroom salt might be quite nice.

It only took a few seconds to make mushroom salt. I whizzed up the dried mushroom stems in a mini-food processor until they became a powder, then added sea salt, and pulsed a few times to combine.

Being a meat-lovin' kind of gal, I did my first experiments with mushroom salt on hamburgers and a roast, rubbing them with it before cooking. As soon as the seasoned meat hit the heat, there was a mouth-watering explosion of fungi-roma. The mushroom flavor was more noticeable on the burgers, but the gravy that I made from roast was rich with umami, which must have come from the mushrooms. So far, I've also found mushroom salt to be good on potatoes and eggs.

Playing with vanilla salt and mushroom salt has made me want to explore new gourmet salt projects. Can you imagine a salt made with fresh thyme and lemon rind in the summer? Or a salt made with sesame seeds and seaweed? Imagine salt combined with chipotles and sun-dried tomatoes. How about juniper berry salt? Or caper and lemon salt? Olive salt? What kind of gourmet salts would you make?

Curious about growing oyster mushrooms? Take a look at these posts - the Alien Ball, Mushroom Cultivation.