Matsutake dietary taboos

Absolutely avoid mixing food with unknown wild toadstools, people with mushroom allergies/allergy-prone constitutions should eat with caution, and do not waste their flavor and nutrients by overcooking. Other taboos spread online such as "cannot be eaten with high-calcium foods" and "cannot be eaten with seafood" have no clear scientific basis.

Don’t think that mixing fungi is far away from you. Every year in the poisoning cases during the fungus season in Yunnan, nine out of ten cases are caused by mixing poisonous fungi with edible fungi. When I was harvesting mushrooms in Shangri-La last year, I met a local farmer who went up the mountain to collect half a basket of matsutake mushrooms. There were two white poisonous mushrooms mixed in that looked very similar to matsutake mushrooms. Fortunately, when I was washing them, an old lady in the village who had collected mushrooms for more than ten years recognized them, otherwise the whole family would have been admitted to the ICU. To be fair here, there are indeed many mushroom eaters who say "you won't be poisoned as long as you cook it for enough time." However, the amanita peptides in the white poisonous amanita will not decompose even if they are cooked at 100°C for two hours. Just eating half a tael can kill a person. So if you go to the mountains to collect mushrooms by yourself, unless you can be 100% sure that every mushroom in your hand is matsutake, don't stuff it into your mouth casually. Safety is always more important than trying new things.

After talking about the most terrible thing, let’s talk about something that is easily ignored. Many people think that since matsutake is a purely natural wild fungus, no one will be allergic to it. This is not true. Two years ago, I took clients to Linzhi to see where matsutake is produced. There was a girl who was fine with eating oyster mushrooms and enoki mushrooms, but she took a bite of freshly fried matsutake. Within two minutes, her neck became red and itchy. She was sent to the local health center. The doctor said she was allergic to the specific wild protein in matsutake. Oh, by the way, don’t think, “I’ve eaten matsutake before and it’s fine, so I will never be allergic.” If you have low immunity recently or are in the allergic period, you may suddenly have an allergic reaction. To be on the safe side, try a small half of a piece when you eat it for the first time. If there is no reaction, then eat it normally.

As for the various matching taboos that are so popular on the Internet, to be honest, they are basically all nonsense. As for "Matsutake contains oxalic acid, eating it with high-calcium foods will cause stones." If you check the food ingredient list, you will know that the oxalic acid content of fresh matsutake is less than one-tenth of spinach. The oxalic acid intake you get from eating a pound of matsutake is not as good as eating two bites of cold spinach. If you are really afraid that oxalic acid will combine with calcium to form stones, it is more practical to ban spinach and amaranth at home first. There is also a saying that "matsutake cannot be eaten with seafood as it will cause poisoning." Last year, I was at a Bai friend's house in Dali and had his grandmother's stewed matsutake and scallops in native chicken soup. It not only contained seafood and scallops, but also added ham and milky mushrooms with high calcium content. Five or six of us at the table ate it without any problems. Of course, I have to mention here that some friends who pay attention to traditional health care think that wild mushrooms are cold in nature, and eating them with cold crabs and watermelons can cause diarrhea. In fact, this is not a pot for matsutake. If you have a weak spleen and stomach, even eating half an ice crab alone can cause diarrhea. You can't blame all the diarrhea on matsutake, right?

Finally, let’s talk about a taboo that is not a “health taboo” but is considered a “waste of natural resources” – don’t stew matsutake mushrooms for too long. Many people are afraid that wild mushrooms are unsafe, so they have to cook them for more than half an hour. If you are not sure whether there are other mixed bacteria in the matsutake, this is certainly true, but if you buy pure fresh matsutake that has been screened, there is really no need to cook it for that long. I once had a friend from Guangdong who threw the two kilograms of fresh matsutake mushrooms I gave him into the old fire soup and simmered them for three hours. The pieces of matsutake mushrooms that he took out looked like sugarcane bagasse that had been chewed for a long time. There was no fresh flavor at all, which made me feel very sad. Pure matsutake itself is not poisonous. It can be eaten by frying it in butter until the edges are slightly curled and the juice is released. Sprinkle some rose salt on it. It is so fresh that you can bite your tongue off. Cooking it for more than 10 minutes is a waste.

I eat at least a dozen kilograms of matsutake mushrooms every year. Over the years, the only people I have ever seen who really had problems with eating matsutake mushrooms were either mixed with toxins or allergic to themselves. The rest are basically scaring themselves. To put it bluntly, there are not so many messy rules for eating matsutake. As long as the bacteria are good ones, you won’t be allergic to them. You can mix them with whatever you like. At most, it’s just a waste of something good if it’s overcooked. If you don’t violate the taboos you read online, you won’t dare to eat it or eat it.