Polar Shiitake mushrooms

Robert Harper

Grow your own mushrooms

Finnish supermarkets are selling a grow your own mushroom pack. It comes wraped in celophane and has instructions on how to grow the mushrooms. These ones are Japanese shiitake mushrooms.

Since this particular mushroom is rather firm and has a nice smokey nutty flavour, and is quite expensive in the shops, I thought it would be a nice experiment to see if I could succeed in growing them.

I cut the log in two and place it in a tin tray which is moistened and kept in the fridge for about a week. The surface is moistened every day until little mushroom buds appear. The logs are then taken out of the fridge and the mushrooms are allowed to grow in the daylight

To hold the logs I cut a plastic bottle in half, placed a log in each half and kept them moist by adding a little water to the trough. The brochure says that you should be able to get three harvests.

After about 5-6 weeks I am really surprised that I I succeeded in growing my own mushrooms. In a few days I will harvest them fry them in butter together with bacon and onion and have them with some pasta.

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