Recipe of the Month: Oyster Mushroom "Steak"

I often have trouble figuring out what to do for Brian on Valentine's Day. Because both Hannukah and his birthday fall in December, by the time February comes around, I've used up all my gift ideas for him, and he's not that big a fan of presents anyway. Doing things together is more his speed, but going out (for dinner, a show, even shopping) isn't really an option right now. Outdoor activities are still okay, but February isn't a great time for them. And all our favorite at-home activities (watching TV together, doing puzzles, having me read aloud to him) are things we do all the time anyway, so they're not that special.

This year, however, I happened to hit on a good idea more or less by chance. I forget exactly how we got onto the subject, but I was asking him whether he missed eating meat (something he hasn't had in a while, since we have entirely stopped cooking it at home, and we haven't been able to eat out for over a year now). He said he didn't mind missing the occasional burger, especially since he usually plumps for the Impossible Burger these days anyway, but he admitted that the idea of a well-cooked steak had not lost its appeal. However, when I asked him if he'd care to spring for a free-range beefsteak to cook at home, he demurred. Then I recalled the oyster mushrooms we'd had at the vegan restaurant we visited on my birthday last year, and how he and my dad both said they tasted a lot like steak. So I suggested some of those for a special Valentine's Day meal, and that he agreed to right away.

I did a quick search on "oyster mushroom steak" and found a simple recipe on the Plant-Based On a Budget blog. It recommended a single large oyster mushroom for each serving, grilled in a pan for three to four minutes on each side and served with a tahini-lemon sauce, accompanied by roasted potato wedges and cherry tomato halves. February not being the ideal time of year for cherry tomatoes, we skipped that part of the meal in favor of some frizzled leeks à la Molly Katzen, but otherwise we stuck to the recipe as provided.

We already had some potatoes, and we picked up the leeks and the oyster mushrooms at H-Mart. We found several kinds of oyster mushrooms, in fact, and we got into a bit of a debate in the store about which variety was most appropriate for the recipe. There were large king oyster mushrooms, dark clusters of black oyster mushrooms, and large clumps labeled as oyster mushrooms with no adjective attached. Not knowing which variety the blogger had in mind, we eventually settled on the unqualified oyster mushrooms as the safest bet. A half-pound package cost us $5 — about as much as we'd have paid for real steak, but without the hefty carbon footprint.

We then had another debate at home about what constituted one oyster mushroom, the recommended portion size, since there were a whole bunch of little caps on each stem. Eventually we decided we'd just cook half the package for the two of us, and if that wasn't enough, it wouldn't take long to do the rest. We also cooked one potato apiece and frizzled an entire leek, since we knew we'd have no trouble using up any leftovers. (Frizzled leeks are great in soup or pasta, or you can just snack on them like chips.) The entire lot — shrooms, potatoes, and leeks — made one overflowing plateful, which we split between the two of us.

The cooked mushrooms certainly didn't look much like steak, but they had a satisfyingly chewy, "meaty" texture and a rich, savory flavor — particularly the bits that had stuck to the pan a bit and got extra browned. In fact, Brian ended up tossing the rest of the mushrooms in the pan and cooking them on extra high heat to get them as torched as possible. This produced a lot of smoke, but also produced extra flavorful mushrooms. Brian's observation was that the flavor seemed to get better the browner they were, but cooking them too thoroughly tended to dry them out and make them tough, so it was a bit of a balancing act to optimize both flavor and texture. The potatoes and leeks both complemented the mushrooms well (better than tomatoes would have, in my opinion). As for the tahini-lemon sauce, it was fine, but neither of us thought it did much to enhance the mushrooms, and we probably wouldn't bother with it another time.

It's been over twenty-five years since I last tasted steak (and even that was only what passed for it at my college dining center), so I couldn't really say how the oyster mushrooms compared to it. When I put the question to Brian, the more recent carnivore, he said, "A mushroom is not a steak, but then again, a steak is not a mushroom." In other words, the mushrooms weren't just like steak, but they had virtues of their own that steak couldn't offer. They couldn't fill you up like a big hunk of animal protein, but they had a stronger natural flavor, even in the parts that weren't all that well browned. And it was a flavor that both Brian, a once-fond fan of beef, and I, who never much cared for it, could enjoy.

So now for the thousand-dollar question (or in this case, the $9.98 per pound question): would we make this again? Well, based on the price, I don't think it's something we'd want to have on a regular basis. But then, I imagine most meat-eaters on a budget wouldn't choose to pay $10 a pound for real steak on a regular basis, either. So I think we can look on this dish the same way a meat-eater could view the cow-based alternative: a nice treat for special occasions. Especially when followed up with a nice lemon pudding cake, coconut whipped cream, and Critical Role.