Made from dried shiitake mushrooms, Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms is a traditional make-ahead dish that can be kept in the fridge or freezer for a long time. Shiitake mushrooms are cooked in a sweet soy sauce until the liquid almost evaporates and becomes glossy.
I once received a big bag of dried shiitake mushrooms as a present. Considering the use-by date, I had to come up with many dishes that use dried shiitake mushrooms. Today’s dish, Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms is one of them.
The beauty of this dish is that you can make a lot and store the leftovers in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for a couple of months. When defrosted, you don’t find that the flavour and texture are compromised at all.
Correct Way to Rehydrate Dried Shiitake Mushrooms
When in a hurry, you often rehydrate dried shiitake mushrooms in hot water to accelerate rehydration. But this is not the right way. Dried shiitake mushrooms need to be rehydrated in water for a minimum of 6 hours (up to 2-3 days) in the fridge. Rehydrating them in the fridge is the key.
When dried mushrooms are rehydrated, guanylic acid (= umami) gets extracted from the shiitake mushrooms and diluted into the water. The water temperature to extract most guanylic acid is 5C/41F.
Therefore, if you use hot water or heat up a bowl of dried mushrooms and water in a microwave to rehydrate quickly, you don’t get umami out of it very much. In addition, using hot water makes the mushrooms a bit bitter.
When you are using dried shiitake mushrooms for cooking, I am afraid you will need to plan ahead for time to rehydrate them.
Flavouring of Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms
Rehydrated mushrooms are cooked in shiitake dashi (the liquid in which dried shiitake mushrooms are rehydrated) + soy sauce + mirin + sugar. The flavour is slightly strong as it is a make-ahead dish to keep for a while. And it’s 100% vegetarian!
Each household has a different proportion of flavouring ingredients and my recipe is probably a little bit light on sugar, as always.
The ratio of these ingredients is: shiitake dashi 40 + soy sauce 3 + mirin 3 + sugar 2.
In my recipe, I used 600ml/1.3pt shiitake dashi + 3 tbsp (45ml/1.5oz) soy sauce + 3 tbsp (45ml/1.5oz) mirin + 2 tbsp (30ml/1oz) sugar to cook 100g of dried shiitake mushrooms.
If you have a sweet tooth, you may want to increase the amount of sugar to 3 tablespoons.
Rehydrated shiitake mushrooms are cooked in the sauce for about 25 minutes. When the sauce starts boiling, a lot of scum (whitish bubbly substances as you can see in the top photo below) surfaces a lot. It is very important to remove the scum as much as possible as it spoils the flavour. When hardly any sauce is left in the pot, the mushrooms are ready to serve (see the bottom photo below).
Great Make-ahead Dish
Japanese people love to have a variety of small side dishes along with a main dish served at the table. And I am no exception. When I cook dinner and feel that I might need one more dish on the table, make-ahead dishes help me fill the gap.
A typical make-ahead dish is pickled vegetables. But vegetables and/or meat simmered in a soy sauce based sweet sauce are also a popular make-ahead dishes as they keep for a long time in the fridge.
Simmered shiitake mushrooms are great for the bento box, too. They are also used in sushi, particularly Chirashizushi (scattered sushi, coming soon!).
Here is a sneak peek at Chirashizushi coming soon.
Depending on the size of the dried mushrooms, you can serve them whole or cut into smaller pieces. If the size of the mushrooms is larger than the bite-size, cut it into halves or quarters so that they are easier to pick up and eat. You could also slice the mushrooms thinly to serve for a change.
Because the taste of Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms is salty and sweet, it goes very well with rice. You can add it as a topping for noodles, too.
Yumiko
PS: I added a new section ‘MEAL IDEAS’ below the recipe card. It gives you a list of dishes that I have already posted and the new recipe in this post that can make up a complete meal. I hope it is of help to you!
Made from dried shiitake mushrooms, Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms is a typical make-ahead dish that can be kept in the fridge or freezer for a long time. It is a handy side dish when you need to add one more dish to the meal.
Total Time does not include time to rehydrate shiitake mushrooms. Servings is assuming it is served as a small side dish.
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Fill an air tight container or a bowl with 1L/2.1pt water and soak the dried shiitake mushrooms in it. Cover and leave it overnight (6-7 hours+) in the fridge (note 1).
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Remove the stem of the rehydrated mushrooms, discard the stems and place the mushrooms in a saucepan. Do not discard the mushroom liquid as it is the shiitake dashi.
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Put the shiitake dashi through a sieve and get rid of black bits in the liquid.
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Measure 600ml/1.3pt (note 2) of shiitake dashi and add to the saucepan. Add the remaining ingredients to the pan and heat over medium heat.
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When it starts boiling, scum (whitish bubbly substances) surfaces quite a lot. Remove the scum using a ladle as much as possible (note 3).
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Place a drop lid on (note 4) and cook for 15 minutes.
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Remove the drop lid and cook further 5-10 minutes until only a small amount of liquid remains (note 5).
1. It’s ok to leave it in the fridge up to 3 days.
2. If the amount of shiitake dashi is not enough, add water.
3. When removing scum, I use a bowl filled with water and rinse the ladle in it each time after scooping the scum from the pot. I do this because the scum tends to stick to the bottom of the ladle and it goes back to the pot next time when you try to scoop new scum.
4. A drop lid is called 'otoshibuta' (落し蓋) in Japanese. It is a round lid that is slightly smaller than the opening of a saucepan. It is traditionally made of wood but I have a stainless-steel lid. It is placed on top of the ingredients in a pot to ensure the heat is evenly distributed, ingredients cook faster, and stay in place without breaking apart. It also stops the liquid from evaporating quickly.
If you don’t have a drop lid, you can make one with aluminium foil. Cut a square in foil, fold the edges to make it a round shape with the diameter slightly smaller than the pot. Then poke the foil with a knife or a chopstick to make holes in several places.
5. If you are intending to serve Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms as a side dish, you may leave more liquid so that the dish looks nicer with some liquid in it. If making this dish for bento for example, you may not want to leave too much liquid.
6. Leftovers can be stored in the fridge for a week or in the freezer for a couple of months. When defrosted, you don’t find that the flavour and texture are compromised at all. Defrost in the fridge or outside if not too hot.
Meal Ideas
A typical Japanese meal consists of a main dish, a couple of side dishes, a soup and rice. I try to come up with a combination of dishes with a variety of flavours, colours, textures and make-ahead dishes.
Because Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms is a sweet side dish, I match it with Salted Salmon. It is good to choose a main dish with different flavour from Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms. Daikon Salad as Side dish 2 gives a refreshing effect on the meal. The ingredients of the Miso Soup can be any combinations of vegetables.
- Main: Japanese Salmon (Slated Salmon) – make ahead for marinating
- Side dish 1: Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms – today’s recipe, make ahead
- Side dish 2: Daikon Salad with Pickled Plum Dressing
- Soup: Tofu and Wakame Miso Soup
- Rice: Cooked Rice
Thank you Yumiko for this amazing recipe!
It was the best dish on my japanese dinner!
Your instructions are written down so well and easy to follow. The shiitake taste so good, a great addition to any dinner.
What type of Mirin do you recommend to use for this dish?
Hi Quinten, that’s great! Re mirin, there are pure mirin and artificial mirin. I don’t use artificial mirin. You can read more about mirin here.
As long as it is pure mirin, it can be any brand.
Is it possible to use fresh instead of dried shiitake?
Please see my reply below.
Is it possible to use fresh shiitake mushrooms I nstead of dried ones?
Yes you can make a similar dish with fresh shiitake mushrooms. you only need to cook 10-15 minutes if use fresh shiitake, so you need to halve the quantity of water to simmer. THe shiitake flavour may not be as intense as the dried shiitake.
This worked perfectly, thank you for your reply! 🙂
Great to hear.
This is delicious. Do you have any suggestion when simmering browner dehydrated mushrooms? Where I live, I can’t find any that are whiter than brown. I pour boiling water for about 7 hours, cut the stem but after simmering for 45 minutes they come out a bit rubbery (though still delicious). Thank you.
Hi Lise, firstly, you don’t pour boiling water to the dried shiitake mushrooms when rehydrating. You must add water and leave them in the fridge for 7 hours. This will bring the best flavour out of the shiitake mushrooms.
When you say browner dehydrated shiitake, do you mean the inside of the cap is brown, not whitish? Many of the Chinese dehydrated shiitake comes like that and you can still use it. 45 minutes of simmering seems to be very long. My recipe suggests 20-25 minutes. Could it be the reason for rubbery texture?
Kon’nichiwa Yumiko! It’s no wonder they came out rubbery. I’ll marinate them properly tomorrow because they are my new favourite ‘snack’. I do add more water and increase the other ingredients to make a larger portion of dashi because the soups are so good. My son and I were in Japan a few years ago and are so looking forward to finding more of your recipes to learn the ‘secrets’ of your exquisite cuisine!
‘Arigatou gozai mashi ta’!
Hi Lisa, Doitashimashite. My pleasure!
This recipe was delicious. I was going to pair this dish with fish. Instead, after sampling a mushroom once cooking was complete, I made 3 more batches and had that for dinner.
Scarcely related question: would you be able to recommend a website that discusses how to adopt the Japanese diet? I live in the United States with little access to Japanese restaurants or markets. Regardless, I want to adopt this diet, and I am hoping to find a website to help guide me.
Hi Sully, wow, that’s a lot of Simmered Shiitake Mushrooms in a day!
Re your question, I am sorry but I am not familiar with it. My philosophy is to eat balanced food moderately with more fish than meat and with less oil & diary products. I also eat substantial food for breakfast & lunch, then have very light dinner.
Looks so yummy! I’m thinking of slicing them small for poke toppings, what do you think?
Hi Doris, that would be perfect!
Hi Yumiko! Great recipe.
Right at the beginning of the recipe notes you say the shitake can be kept in the fridge up to 3 days, but at end of it you say a week. Which one would it be?
How should it be stored? In a airtight container?
Thanks a lot
Hi Alexandre, 3 days is the maximum duration of soaking shiitake mushrooms. If freezing, I’d put the simmered shiitake (including juice if there are any) in a zip lock bag and remove air a much as possible. Airtight container is also good.
Delicious! I made this to serve over rice and while I had to substitute rice vinegar and a bit more sugar for the mirin, it turned out great! A bit sweet like you said, but works so well with plain rice. It’s like a hidden umami bomb in the rice! Is there a garlicky version? Or can I just add a few garlic cloves into the pot?
Hi Brianna, I am glad that you liked it. I don’t have a garlic version. Traditional Japanese dishes don’t use garlic. But if you want add, I would do what you suggested.
Hi Yumiko, I’ve read the recipe, and I think this would be like an amazing way to serve an unusual type of mushroom for my friends who are obsessed with trying always new and delicious things. I can’t wait to see their faces when I tell them they need to be rehydrated and everything. Just a little question; I’m buying them from https://www.burmaspice.com/ this page, which was recommended by a friend who always buys spices from there. Any suggestion to buy the Shiitakes?
Hi Steffano, the dried shiitake mushrooms in the link you gave me looks great. And they are very cheap. Try to find thick mushrooms if you have a choice. Avoid broken ones. If you can see the white part of the mushrooms (mushroom gills), check if the colour is very light brown/ivory. They should not be brown.
Hello Thanks for all your recepies , could this be a good topping for ramen ?
hi Michael, Simmered Shiitake is a bit sweet but if you don’t mind having sweetness, you can use it as a topping for Ramen.