Dried mushrooms take top honors when it comes to ingredients you can depend on to reproduce the bold, full-bodied flavors of French and Italian dishes. These must-have ingredients add a depth of flavor that fresh, button mushrooms simply cannot rival. Knowing buy dried mushrooms becomes a tricky matter, especially to the novice.
Instructions
1. Buy several different brands of dried mushrooms at your local supermarket, then smell the mushrooms. Their aroma should be potent and earthy and definitely not flat or moldy.
2. Buy dried mushrooms sold loose in bulk rather than packaged. This gives allows you to observe the color, smell and overall look of the dried mushrooms.
3. Choose dried mushrooms still in large pieces rather than dehydrated crumbs. The color of high quality dried mushrooms leans more toward light and medium brown with no streaks of black.
4. Read the label ingredients on the package of dried mushrooms. Choose the package containing 100 percent porcini mushrooms rather than a random blend of unidentified kinds of wild mushrooms, explained in the Resources, below.
5. Contact Aux Delices Des Bois (14 Leonard Street, New York, NY 10013; (800) 666-1232 or (212) 334-1230). This artisan food shop offers a wide variety of superior dried mushrooms from all over the world. Catalogs and prices are available.
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