What's the Best Way to Store Mushrooms?



Given their damp, shady habitat, it is no surprise that button mushrooms have little tolerance for careless storage. When stored at home, mushrooms go quickly from proud and plucky to shriveled and dispirited or slimy and discolored. To test the best storage method, we purchased several 12-ounce packages of button mushrooms. We stored one in its original sealed container, one in a paper bag (suggested by the Mushroom Council and thought to promote air circulation), one in a perforated plastic bag (thought to promote air circulation and hold moisture simultaneously), and one in its original cardboard container with the wrap removed and mushrooms then covered with a damp paper towel. (We did not clean the mushrooms, which can cause bruising and would affect our results.)

At the end of five days, the mushrooms in the paper bag were completely dehydrated. The mushrooms in the perforated plastic bag were spongy and discolored. The mushrooms under the (ever-refreshed) damp paper towel were also discolored, but in relatively good condition. The mushrooms in their original sealed container experienced the least deterioration; they were perfectly good after four days. By the fifth day they looked slightly dry and flaky in their container. The moral of this story: Sometimes ready-made packaging has a function beyond simple convenience—sometimes it actually helps to preserve the contents. If you open a sealed package of mushrooms but don’t use all the contents, simply rewrap the package (with the remaining mushrooms still inside) with plastic.