How To Dry Mushrooms In The Oven Quickly & Easily

Want to know how to dry mushrooms in the oven? Read on for my failsafe guide to help cut your food waste.

I don’t know about you but mushrooms are something that I have trouble using up. I don’t enjoy eating raw mushrooms, only cooked ones. As such, more often than not quite a few go slimy in the fridge before I have a chance to use them.

I’m all about reducing my food waste, both to help the environment and to save money. As such I’ve been trying to think of a way to stop so many from going to waste.

Then I came across the idea of drying mushrooms in the oven via Cooking On A Bootstrap and what a revelation that has been!

I’ve found that drying mushrooms is a fantastic way to extend their shelf life and reduce food waste. It intensifies their flavour, making them perfect for soups, sauces, stews, casseroles, chillis, and risotto. Plus they add texture to any vegetarian or vegan meal.

So, if, like me, you’re looking to save money, cut your food waste, and savour that delicious umami goodness all year round, let me show you how it’s done!

How to Dry Mushrooms in the Oven

It’s really easy to dry mushrooms in the oven. And then they last for absolute ages until you’re ready to use them, so you can really cut your food waste. What I also love is that you can dry them in the oven while you’re cooking something else in the oven to save energy.

Here’s how it’s done:

How to Dry Mushrooms

Learn how to oven dry mushrooms with this really useful tutorial – never throw an off mushroom away again!

Print Recipe

Prep Time:5 minutes mins

Cook Time:20 minutes mins

Total Time:25 minutes mins

Ingredients

• Mushrooms

Instructions

• Clean your mushrooms (you can use any type of edible mushroom). I used a dry towel to clean them, but if yours are particularly dirty and need washing make sure you give them a good dry after washing.
• Chop into half an inch thick slices. If you slice them thicker then they'll take longer to dry out, so remember to adjust your cooking time. Some of the stalks are missing in the photo above as mine had sat in the fridge for so long, and had gone a bit funny, but otherwise there's no need to remove the stalks.
• Place on a baking tray in preheated (180ºC / 350ºF / gas mark 4) oven for 20 minutes.
• Remove from the oven, turn over, and place back in the oven for a further 20 minutes, or until dry and the mushroom snaps when you break it in half. They shouldn't feel spongy, but crispy.
• Store in a clean airtight jar in a dark place for years!

I generally just add dried mushrooms straight into soups, sauces, etc. as I’m cooking. However, you can soak them in boiling water or stock to reconstitute them first if you prefer.

I love this method so much that I now quite often buy cheap mushrooms from the reduced section of shops just to dry. I made this vegetarian chilli the other week and added some of my mushrooms to it. What a great addition it made!

If you enjoyed this post I’ve got a few other food waste tips for other types of food in the archives, including bread, milk, eggs, berries, and bananas!