Button mushroom: Encyclopedia - Button mushroom

Button mushroom

The button mushroom, also called the table mushroom, white mushroom, common mushroom, cultivated mushroom, and called champignon de Paris in France, is one of the most widely cultivated mushrooms in the world. Note that while this specific mushroom is sometimes called simply champignon in the English-speaking world, this word means "mushroom" in general in French.

Most grocery stores in the Western world sell this mushroom in canned and fresh preparations. An agaric, its gills are often left on in preparations. It can be found cooked on pizzas and casseroles, raw on salads, and in various forms in a variety of dishes.

Button mushrooms are fairly rich in vitamins and minerals. The mushroom contains an especially high amount of vitamin B and potassium. Raw mushrooms are naturally cholesterol, fat, and sodium free. The mushrooms also have very low energy levels — five medium-sized button mushrooms added together only have 20 calories.

Button mushrooms have a unique flavor that can be matched by few other mushrooms. No specific flavor can be defined — most people describe the mushroom as "plain", but other people say that the button mushroom tastes slightly sweet or "meaty".

Like potatoes and apples, table mushrooms "rust" quickly when exposed to air. When sliced and exposed to air for 10 minutes or more, the mushrooms quickly soften, turn into a brownish color, and lose their original flavor. For this reason, whole raw button mushrooms always have the best flavor.

The agaricus bisporus mushroom originated in France. Today's commercial variety of the button mushroom was originally a light brown color. In 1926, a Pennsylvanian mushroom farmer found a clump of button mushrooms with white caps in his mushroom bed. As was done with the navel orange and red delicious apple, cultures were grown from the mutant individuals, and most of the cream-colored store mushrooms we see today are products of this haphazard natural mutation.

In most supermarkets, button mushrooms are marketed as "table mushrooms" and are often packed in small quantities. Mushrooms may be sold sliced or whole.

The Portobello mushroom (sometimes portobella) is a large brown strain of the same fungus, left to mature and take on a broader, more open shape before picking. Portobello mushrooms are distinguished by their large size, thick cap and stem, and a distinctive musky smell. Because of their size - and the thickness of their fleshy caps - these mushrooms can be cooked in a range of different ways, including grilling and frying.

Although sometimes described a sub-variety of the portobello mushroom, the crimini or cremini mushroom is actually an immature portobello. In fact, savvy marketers have begun to refer to crimini mushrooms as baby portobellos. Left to grow another 48 to 72 hours, a crimini mushroom will more than quadruple in size, taking on the large-capped portobello shape. They are more delicate in texture but still have the meaty portobello flavor.

A closely-related wild mushroom, the meadow mushroom (A. campestris), can be found throughout much of the United States. However, care must be taken, as it resembles the immature stage of a number of the deadly poisonous Amanita species.

Growers of white mushrooms often must watch out for the red-capped weed Panaeolus (Panaeolus subbalteatus), a hallucinogenic mushroom that grows in the same environment. Panaeolus subbalteatus is found on manure and rotting hay in the wild, and is frequently found in the compost used by white mushroom cultivators. With its differently shaped reddish-brown cap, it does not look similar to the white mushroom, which greatly eases finding and removing it from the crop.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Button mushroom", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki