What's up everyone. Welcome back to Epic Gardening.
And today I might as well call it Epic fungi because we're going to be doing a
lion's mane mushroom grow along,
which is one of the most interesting looking and one of the most interesting
tasting mushrooms that I have personally ever grown.
You can see a little shot of what it will look like right there.
And so the first thing you do after you unwrap this patch,
which I got from Fungi Perfecti, is you have to remove the top growth.
You can see my cousin Jon here is removing just a little bit of the growth at
the top because it doesn't taste good and it's going to sap energy that we would
rather have the mushroom put into the fruit bodies,
the lion's mane mushrooms that we're eventually going to harvest and eat.
And so now after you tape down the top,
what you have to do is cut some slits into the bag because not only do you need
some aeration to that substrate,
but you also need to provide an avenue for lion's mane fruit bodies to actually
come out. And if I was to do this again, I would actually cut less holes.
So the less holes you cut, the less lion's mane mushrooms you're going to get,
but the larger they'll be.
And I prefer more mushrooms that are a bit larger as opposed to many mushrooms
that are a bit smaller.
And so we're boiling water because we want to remove chlorine and chloramine and
other things like that from the water because again,
we're going to be spraying this on a living thing,
this mushroom mycelium and the fruit bodies of the lion's mane mushroom.
So we definitely have to make sure that there are no things that would harm
that. So that's why we're boiling the water,
putting it into a quick little spray bottle.
And when you're growing a lion's mane mushroom,
you need that humidity to be pretty high and you need temps to be pretty high.
So you need to mist it two to three times a day like you're seeing my cousin Jon
do right here. And then you need to add a humidity dome. And the humidity dome,
as the name would imply,
is going to make sure that that local humidity in the area of the mushroom patch
is much higher than your normal home. Because chances are if you're like me,
a normal home does not have a high enough humidity level to grow these mushrooms
and that's why you need this dome right here.
You can see it has some air holes just so you don't actually, you know,
create a lot of mold or fungus or something like that.
So you just put it in a cool place, not super to light.
And you can see a little shots of the early growth.
This is not ready to harvest, but there is some early growth right here.
We're going to cut into the recipe and the harvest right now.
Welcome to my kitchen. Welcome to Jon's kitchen. Mine. You're holding,
he's holding that knife a little menacingly. But today we've got oyster,
no lion's mane mushrooms.
This is a lion's mane and it is an absolute beauty.
And you'll know that it's ready to harvest when you see these,
I don't know the fungal name for these things,
but the tendrils start to drop like this.
Because in the wild lion's mane can grow like,
it'll droop like crazy off of the trees that it grows on. Um, but you know,
this is a, this is a kit grown lion's man from Fungi Perfecti.
And it's still going to be tasty. So we're gonna,
we're going to harvest it right now.
We're actually going to cut it up and do a little cooking. So let's go for it.
So Jon's just going to come in and cut it right off at the base. Very gently.
There we go. Let's take a look at the specimen we've got here. Ooh.
Look at that thing. Oh my gosh. That's actually, that's actually,
that's actually pretty big, yeah. Size of my head. Size of his head. Okay,
let's go close up. Mushroom. Smells like a mushroom. What does it smell like.
Sounds like a button mushroom to be honest. It does.
It just kind of smells like a normal mushroom guys. Okay.
We're going to go ahead and get to the slicing. All right, coffee and mushrooms,
we're chopping it up. So the thing Jon's doing here,
what we want to do is cut this into about half inch steaks,
uh, because we want it to be uniform, so all the moisture comes out evenly.
This is actually quite heavy.
I would say this is probably like four ounces or something like that. Um,
and so he's just going to chop it into about half inch steaks straight down and
we'll go from there.
So he's just going to come through and delicately chop and we'll,
we'll show you the cross-sections of it.
And the reason we're doing it this way is because you've got to get the moisture
out of this. Just like us, mushrooms are mostly water.
Um, and so if you can't get that moisture out,
you're not going to get a nice crispy mushroom.
You're going to get something that's a little bit mushy,
probably still tastes good, but not the most,
not the most perfect thing that you could eat.
And if you're going to grow this thing, it takes what, two, three,
four weeks sometimes to grow. Um, yeah, let's take a look at this.
You're going to want it to be an actually delicious treat, right?
You'll want to give yourself the best chance possible. Wow,
that looks amazing actually.
So let's take a quick look inside.
All right, let's get to cooking. We're going to toss this in the pan over here
and we're just going to go medium heat, dry pan,
five to seven minutes just to get all the moisture out until it browns up.
And then we're going to take that out, add some butter, heat that butter up,
and then put it back in and kind of fry it like you would a, like an egg.
Straight in the pan.
There we go.
All right, we're about at five minutes in a dry pan on one side.
So Jon's going to come in and he's going to do a quick flip.
That is what we're looking for. Remember, we haven't added the butter yet.
We're trying to get the moisture out and and crisp it up just slightly before we
actually add the butter. And then we season it with salt and pepper.
You don't want to go too crazy with the seasonings.
You want to really maximize that lion's mane flavor and not maximize,
you know, any sort of flavor that is not the lion's mane. Um, so let's go ahead.
We're going to go another five on this side and we'll be back in a sec.
Five minutes later,
the sides have now been demoisturized and crisped slightly.
And so what we're going to do now is take them out of here,
put them on the plate, get the butter going, and put them back on.
So Jon's gonna pop in and they are looking really nice there.
A little bit crispy on these edges. Nothing too crazy though.
The butter is going to do that job,
but they're just a bit more solid and a lot of that moisture is out of there.
So the texture is going to be much,
much better than it normally would be if you were to just go in straight away.
So we're just gonna chop a bit of this butter, maybe a tablespoon or so.
Pop that in and you don't need anything else. I mean you just do this and then,
ooh, I love that sound. Um, you just do this.
And then once you're done with this, sprinkle some salt.
And then actually I found that putting a decent amount of pepper on them at the
end really improved the flavor. To me, that's just my personal call.
But uh, let's flip this heat up. Yeah,
we'll turn the heat up just slightly. And remember,
this is all something you can literally grow in your own home forever.
Lion's mane, oysters, just mushrooms in general.
You can grow these pretty much forever, uh, in your own home. All right,
so let's pop these back in and we'll sizzle them up real good.
Ooh, that sound. That wonderful sound. Smells so good.
What does it smell like, Jon?
Just like warm butter smell, you know. Warm butter.
All right,
so we're gonna let these go probably a couple minutes each side.
Now this is where you actually want them to crisp up.
So we turn the heat up a bit and actually let them get, not,
not like chips or anything like that,
but definitely you want a tiny bit of crisp to them. Here we go.
It's plated. It's ready to taste. But wait,
I have a special guest here guys. I found the Salt Bae.
Not just the Salt Bae. We get a little bit of the pepper. He's got pepper.
Do the Salt, do the Cross Bae.
Oh look at this. Aaah! Which,
I don't know,
if you guys haven't seen the Salt Bae that probably didn't make any sense to
you, but it's one of my favorite memes of 2017. Uh,
have you seasoned it well enough, Jon? Are we good? Give it a little more.
Give it a little more salt. Oohhh. Oh yeah, there we go. All right.
What does he do? What does he do? Taste it.
Mwah. What does it taste like? What are we looking at?
Damn, that's
delicious. Describe it. What are we, what flavors are coming to the top?
The salt and pepper really just kick it off.
The butter is nice and light and it's a little chewy,
but it has the consistency of crab meat. So if you've ever had crab meat,
it's identical.
So they say that the lion's mane tastes the most like lobster over crab.
Do you see that or what do you think? It
just tastes like a good mushroom man, this is really, really solid. Alright,
I got to come in and give it a try. Hold on one sec. All right. You know what?
I don't think there's enough salt on this for me so I'm just going to do a
little Quick Bay. Ooh. All right, let's taste this. Dude,
that is so good.
The first time I made these I didn't dry it out enough and there was,
it was kind of a little bit mushy on the inside.
This time we got all the moisture out and the outside,
it looks like it's burnt but it's not. It's like nice and crispy.
It is very, it's a little chewy. It's very solid.
I think this is my favorite mushroom now.
I wouldn't say it tastes like a lobster, but it has a seafoody,
like it has like a rich seafood crab type taste.
But it's its own thing for sure.
And this was all grown from Fungi Perfecti kits over the course of like three
weeks. Damn. It's really good.
You guys need to really try growing this mushroom, it is fantastic.
So I think what Jon's gonna do over here is you can take this and you can grow
more flushes of mushrooms off of this.
And then when you're done with this itself,
you can actually inoculate logs and grow this outdoors as well.
And so if you really want to take it to the next level,
you get a couple more harvests off of the patch itself and then you can actually
take it out into the yard and do some flushes there too.
So I'm coming in for another quick little snackarooni.
Thanks for watching. We will see you on the next video.
And hit Like and Subscribe if you like mushroom videos.
This is something new I'm experimenting with. I'm just a beginner,
so let me know what you think and we'll do more. So thanks guys.
I would give you a smile, but my mouth is full of mushrooms so I can't do it.
See you on the next video.