dried shitakes..texture??

[Kim WB]

Hi, I have a recipe that calls for shitake dust, made from grinding dried shitakes in a spice grinder. The problem is, the dried shitakes I bought were not so much "dry" as , well, one could say, "dry-spongy".  They did not grind, just kind of mushed and folded.  To the experienced chefs, is it a poor quality dried mushroom, or is that their usual texture, and is the recipe one of those sadist selections of impossible to make dishes that sound great?   I'd just try buying more mushrooms, from another source, but they're pricey and I'm trying to research first.  

[Jason Perlow]

It could be the humidity level in which they were stored. Thats one of the reasons I own a food dehydrator for drying my chiles that I grow during the summer, which would not completely dry out naturally.

[Bux]

I've had a problem grinding "dry" shitakes and the ones I've had have been pretty dry. The best I could do was to push them through a sieve. It was actually more a question of abrading them on the mesh and having the powder fall through. I'm not sure there's not a better or easier way and I wouldn't treat this as a response from a chef.

I had the same, or even harder time trying to grind dried shrimp. In their case, I was able to dry them further with better results. I've not done it a second time.

[mamster]

I've never tried to grind dried shiitakes, but dried shrimp can be smashed to a fairly dry paste in a mortar and pestle.  It's still more of a paste than a powder, though.

I wonder if crushing shrimp chips would yield a useful shrimp-flavored powder.

[Andy Lynes]

Would a further drying out in a very low oven, maybe overnight, help. This is a guess as I have never reduced dried mushrooms to powder, but do that it is a favourite process used by UK chef Richard Neat. I do have an article stored away somewhere about Neat, I'll dig it out and see if there is any indication how to do this. I do remeber however that he generally used ceps, a great deal more expensive than shitake.

[ChefSwartz]

DO NOT LEAVE THE OVEN ON OVERNIGHT, this will burn the delicate oils in the veg, (they have extremely low smoking points),Try putting them in the convection with just the fan on overnight, they should be dry afterwards. You can take whole carrots,turnips,celery,onion,mushrooms and dry them in the same process. Before you start, shave the veggies on a box cheese grater, then try making a great earthy savory crust by grinding them in the robot coupe toegether. This goes great on roasted meats,fish,etc. wherever.

[fifi]

Thanks for bumping this up and welcome to the Society ChefSwartz.

As so often happens, I was thinking about finding out how to do this but had not had a chance to search yet. I bought some particularly fine dried shitakes at the Asian market not long ago and was thinking about a ground mushroom "crust." The more I played around with them while still sealed in their bag, I was wondering how to do this. I have a DeLonghi convection oven that has a dehydration setting. I was recently successful at drying some tangerine peel. If I slice the mushrooms or maybe even grate them, would putting them in the dehydrator get them to a texture that can be ground in the spice grinder? Also, since you aren't rinsing them, what about grit? Is that a problem?