Chestnut: Mushroom of the month for August 2022
The Chestnut is one of our most flavourful gourmet mushrooms and it is the mushroom of the month for August.
The Pholiota adiposa has a pronounced nutty flavour. It is a tender mushroom with delicate caps and stems. You will notice when handling a cluster of Chestnut mushrooms that you can pull them off the bunch without much difficulty.
The nutty flavour goes very well with any meat dish. We had a recipe card last year for a Chestnut mushroom bourguignon that was savoury and hearty. That recipe is also available on our website.
There are also recipes for a Chestnut mushroom gnocchi (which can substitute or mix with the Pioppino mushrooms) and a glazed mushroom and shallot puff pastry tart. The Chestnut mushroom is what you want when you’re looking for a mushroom that doesn’t need much seasoning to add a noticeable depth of flavour to a meal.
It is also a nice mushroom to look at. It is a golden-brown colour with little spikes that appear as the fruitbody just begins to grow out of the mushroom block.
@jcbgourmetmushrooms Harvesting Chestnuts #gourmetmushrooms #smallbusiness #harvest ♬ original sound - JCBGourmetMushrooms
@jcbgourmetmushrooms Chestnut Harvesting#fyp #harvest #smallbusiness #gourmetmushrooms ♬ original sound - JCBGourmetMushrooms
Chestnut mushrooms take about three weeks to grow after the mycelium is fully developed in the growing block. It is an intermediate-level mushroom grow kit for that reason since you will have to be more patient when misting at least three to five times a day. We very often have Chestnut mushrooms available to buy at farmers’ markets across Ottawa, so feel free to come and ask us about the Chestnut grow kits. They can handle some warmer summer temperatures, up to about 25 Celsius (77 Fahrenheit).
This is arguably the best Chestnut mushroom out there, at least to us at JCB Gourmet Mushrooms. The Pioppino mushroom (Agrocybe aegerita) has also been referred to as a Chestnut mushroom. Both it and the Pholiota adiposa have more flavour than the brown button mushroom, which also goes by “Chestnut mushroom”. We wrote an article about this in 2021, which lists other mushrooms with Chestnut in the name.
Newsletter subscribers get a discount code for the mushroom of the month. Subscribe to it if you haven’t already and then get yourself some Chestnut mushrooms, fresh or as grow kits!