Mushroom meat experiments on/with grain

Food & Fermentation
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#1

Hej peeps, another experiment of mine… I thought why growing fruiting bodies?! So much climate control and shit. So I did experiments with different grains, strains, containers and marinades. The results/findings where:

  1. Fungal enzymes are quite bitter and you can’t seperate them from the cake. Having the cultivation running for too long results in quite bitter taste.
  2. Shapes wise the petris dishes served well and cakes where easy to remove.
  3. The cakes sucked the marinades in pretty well - I tried smoked flavours and well as barbeque and other stuff - after frying the taste was like bread. So preparation is easy.
  4. Nutritionwise - I never assesed wether this method provides any advantage to eating the grain straight?!
  5. Tastewise - I think there is lots of improvement possible. Tuning cultivation time, substrate and marinade could end up in something tasty.
  6. Texture was meaty/bready :smiley: haha

Hope you enjoyed my trials. (Quite a while ago that I did them)

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4 Likes
#2

laughed at why grow fruiting bodies

love the experimentation, last one really looks like a burger

just last night, ate a quinoa burger that was really good, so this is on my mind

1 Like
#3

Yeah, this looks great.

I don’t think the enzymes make the bitter taste though. Protein doesn’t taste strogly itself I believe. I’m not sure, this is rather a gut feeling based on my (limited) understanding of how taste works. Pretty sure this tastes way better on legumes honestly but then we’re talking tempeh I’d say. Would be worth it though, to just make really tasty tempeh burgers.

#4

I have tried a similar approach like this one with different kinds of legumes with a friend last lear, the result wasn´t that mesmerizing. I think we tried lentils, mung beans (as on the pictures), kidneybeans and lupine. It is import to say that we were not that rigorous with the incubation time and even ended up with some secondary metabolite excreted from the Pleurotus ostreatus mycelium. A strong marinade didn´t help either. We assumed the bitter taste comes from this metabolite (not sure if it is an enzyme though).
The texture was interesting, but for trying again I would go with shorter incubation times! :smiley:
I also think that a mixture of some grains with legumes could enhance the texture!

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3 Likes
#5

Hey @timst, nice to see your results here! I’m curious: How much time did you incubate roughly? Looks like a week or more, is that right?
How did the moisture level work for you?

I also really wonder what the bitter compound might be!

#6

Hey @phylanx

I don’t remember exactly, but I think it was between 1,5- 2 weeks of incubation time.

The moisture level worked well on all substrates simply with precooking. I guess in the end it does work quite similar to Tempeh :slight_smile:
Maybe a reduction of the time to precook the substrate could also make the patty more stable!