Mushrooms as food and medicine: antique medicine for newfangled times
Mushrooms assist us understand that medicine is not just about chemicals. They remind us that medicines are not something we consume on our own. It is something we develop, share and live.
Get your daily dose of health with recipes for:
– Crackers with medicinal mushrooms
– Broth with medicinal mushrooms and vegetables
– Chaga-Reishi Chai
The following excerpt is from Mycelium healer By Christopher Parker and Katherine Parker. It has been adapted for utilize on the Internet.
We call mushrooms our daily dose of health.
We add them to homemade broths, brew mushroom tea and cook with mushrooms. We also utilize special methods to augment the potency of the medicinal mushrooms we cultivate, including sun treatment. We perform double extractions – a long alcohol extraction followed by a scorching water extraction – to harvest as many beneficial healing properties as possible.
Increasing the potency of our medicinal mushrooms may seem like a modern concept. But people have been doing this for a long time. It is a ponderous form of drug manufacturing that produces very potent drugs. We live in a world where everything was bigger, faster and more. Not only does this reduce the quality of our lives, but it also reduces the quality of the food we eat and creates the feeling that the ponderous process is unsatisfying and not worth the effort.
But deep down, we know that if it takes time and energy to create something, we will be more satisfied when our efforts come to fruition. It takes eight weeks to make an alcohol extract, and even scorching water extraction of mushrooms can take up to two hours, much longer than it takes to make a tea or decoction of medicinal plants.
Black beans colonized by Lion’s Mane mycelium.
The increased popularity of medicinal mushrooms has resulted in the appearance of many brands and recipes of mushroom supplements on the market.
Many mushroom coffee products are made from mycelled rice that has been ground and added to coffee. However, in most medicinal mushrooms, the fruiting body is the part containing the greatest amount of medicinal compounds.
Some supplement labels list the ingredients as simply the name of the mushroom, such as “Lion’s Mane,” and others list something more specific, such as “Lion’s Mane Extract.” It is likely that the “extract” contains compounds extracted from the mushroom, and not just the dried and ground parts of the mushroom that our bodies are unable to absorb. Before purchasing, it is best to research the company thoroughly and familiarize yourself with its extraction methods.
Medicinal mushrooms as food
Many medicinal mushrooms are largely not only medicinal mushrooms, but also great culinary mushrooms. In my opinion the two best are Wishi (Leafy Grifolaalso called Maitake) and Milk Mushrooms (lactation AND Lactifluus sp.).
You may have loved ones who need medicinal mushrooms but don’t want to consume them frequently, even if it could improve their physical and mental health and well-being or assist cure an illness.
Many children have not yet developed a palate for mushrooms. We know that caregivers and parents can struggle to provide their children with the proper nutrition.
The easiest way to utilize the healing properties of mushrooms is to include them in your diet several times a week or month. Cooking with mushrooms has its advantages and disadvantages. When mushrooms are cooked in a meal, they may not be fully cooked to break down the cell walls, which is necessary to release some of the beneficial high molecular weight compounds.
Moreover, some of the volatile medicinal compounds may be removed, which is a loss. That’s why we want to share with you the basics of cooking with mushrooms to make the most of their healing properties.
Cooking mushrooms in soups or stews is the best method for using mushrooms as medicine in food. Low and ponderous cooking exposes the mushroom cell walls to longer cooking times, breaking them down and releasing more beneficial polysaccharides into the food.
MEDICINAL MUSHROOM CRACKERS
Rustic rosemary and mushroom crackers
Adding mushrooms to the dough for homemade crackers is an straightforward way to incorporate medicinal mushrooms into your diet, especially if you have picky eaters at home. You can start with your favorite cracker recipe. If you make much more scorching mushroom extract than you can utilize in one batch, it will freeze well and be ready to utilize next time.
We like to make oyster mushroom crackers, but any mild-tasting mushroom will do. Lion’s Mane is a good substitute.
For a recipe calling for 2 cups of flour, add 1 cup of mushrooms extracted with scorching water.
Start with 1/2 pound of oyster mushrooms, chop them finely and simmer for 90 minutes in 2 to 3 cups of water.
After cooling down, mix them in a blender until thoroughly homogenized. Take 1 cup of blended mushrooms and mix with 2 cups of flour. At this point we also like to add 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh rosemary or 3/4 tablespoon of dried rosemary.
If you’ve never made crackers, there are plenty of good recipes and instructional videos online.
After mixing and adjusting the moisture level of the dough, roll it out, cut it, place it on baking paper, then on a baking tray and bake it. We utilize an oven preheated to 204°C and bake for 12 to 17 minutes.
Stay busy and forget about the crackers! They can overcook quickly.
The crackers on the edges may brown slightly more than the ones in the middle. Remove the entire sheet from the oven and let it frosty before breaking open the crackers. As they frosty, they will become crispier. Store in an airtight container and enjoy the taste.
Decoction of medicinal mushrooms – vegetables.
Mushroom and vegetable medicinal broth
When preparing vegetables for a meal, we save onion skins, carrot tops and tips, parsnips, celery and other vegetable scraps. We put the decorations in the freezer, and when we have collected enough of them, we put them in a ponderous cooker, cover them with water, add medicinal and culinary mushrooms, and then simmer overnight. You can then utilize this broth to make soup, or you can add sea salt and pass the broth through a pressure container to have it on hand when needed. In recent years, broths have been experiencing a renaissance. This is part of us taking back the power to provide our bodies with the vigorous nutrients they need to heal or stay vigorous. We also prepare supercharged bone broth from mushrooms, mushroom stems, perfect mushrooms, leftover vegetables, wild herbs and bones of hunted animals. This broth can be made vegan if you do not consume animal parts.
We usually wait until we have about 12 cups of leftover mushrooms and vegetables, enough to make 1.5 gallons of broth. We like to have about a one-to-one ratio of vegetarian material to mushrooms. We simmer this broth in a huge pot on the stove for 90 minutes to get the best flavor and process the mushrooms for final extraction. Store the broth in half-liter jars; 1.5 gallons of broth can make 12 quarts of broth. It just works for us, but you can adjust and make the broth at a scale that suits you.
Homemade medicinal bone broth.
For mushrooms, we like to utilize oysters, shiitake (especially the stems), turkey tail, and birch. Employ available soup bones. Another option is to add some venison bones or a front shank with the bone cut in two so the marrow can be extracted. If you are not using bones, you will need some type of fat to improve the flavor of the broth. Avocado oil is a great high heat oil that adds a subtle buttery flavor.
Also add some wild herbs such as Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota), wild violet herbs (Viola sororia) or hollyhock leaves. We do not recommend using brassicas (such as kale, cabbage or Brussels sprouts). They will add bitterness to the finished broth.
Much like a tea ceremony, this ceremony of caring for all your vegetables, harvesting wild vegetables, and even processing animal bones from local farms can be very beneficial to your mental and spiritual health. You close the circulation of nutrients and turn the circle of life a little closer to yourself.
Dried medicinal mushrooms and chai ingredients and a cup of chai ready to drink.
CHAGA-REISHI CHAI
Reishi (Ganoderma radiant) has been called the “Mushroom of Immortality” for centuries. Its bitter compounds support the liver and modulate immune functions.
Our Chaga-Reishi Chai is not only delicious and soothing to the body, but is also a powerful medicine. You can experiment with other ingredient combinations to find what works best for you. We utilize a 1-gallon ponderous cooker.
Preparing this chai is a long process, so we like to prepare a huge batch that we keep in the fridge to heat up whenever we feel like enjoying it. If you don’t have a ponderous cooker, you can utilize a 1-gallon or larger pot. You can leave it to cook for several hours.
It’s a good idea to start this project in the evening – you’ll have chai in the morning!
First, place the medicinal mushrooms in the pressure cooker and add water to about an inch from the top. Set the pressure cooker to maximum power and when the water reaches boiling point, reduce the heat to low.
After cooking the mushrooms for several hours or overnight, they can be removed from the water extract in the pressure cooker or left in the extract. Either way, at this point we add the spices. Grind whole spices in a mortar and pestle, but do not grind them into powder. Partially crush them until they open, which will release the flavors better. (The orange peel and sliced ginger do not need to be crushed.) After adding the spices, augment the heat again for 30 minutes or until the chai becomes aromatic, then strain. We like this chai with honey and whole milk or half and half. The choice is yours. We think it will last at least five to seven days in the fridge.
Sometimes the bitter compounds from Reishi can still permeate through all these different flavors. The peppercorns add a bit of spice to soften the flavor of the Reishi. In most cases, we choose to make this chai without black tea. If we want black tea, add a mixture of Assam, Darjeeling and Ceylon to a ball or strainer and pour scorching chai into a cup. In this case, cover and leave to infuse for 5 to 10 minutes. Take out the tea strainer, add milk and honey and enjoy your tea.