Sun Bay Foods White Flower Shiitake Mushrooms – All Natural Vegan and Gluten-Free Dried Whole Mushrooms – 4-5 cm, 16 oz.

Followed instructions to rehydrate mushrooms for two hours in cold water. Mushrooms felt soft after two hours, but should’ve left them in longer. The outside, thinly sliced pieces tasted perfect when sauteed in a tomato olive oil sauce. The thick and underhydrated slices were tough to chew. I will let them soak longer next time, and will definitely purchase again due to shelf life, flavor, packaging, and aroma.

My experience with many dried mushrooms is that, like weak tea, one is mostly chewing and tasting water. The instructions tell you to soak these in cool/cold water (hot/warm not recommended) — and I highly applaud this. They say that two hours should be enough — which is true for the outer rim of the mushroom. But 24 hours of passive soaking can allow one to eat the entire savory mushroom (I interrupt the soak at two hours long enough to chop the mushrooms, cutting each into six or so pieces to expose the resistant, drier stem to the full benefits of saturation). When rich and moist throughout and fried hot in canola oil, these rival any non-dried mushrooms — and many meats, in terms of genuine toothsome pleasure. (Before soaking, too, I have to say they are humblingly beautiful.)

These shiitake mushrooms are beautiful. Each perfect little dried shiitake looks as though it were hand-picked. So convenient to store and easy to use. Pictured are six shiitakes before and after soaking. They soaked for 2 hours and added a deep flavor and meaty texture to my recipe. I used the soaking broth in homemade portobello bisque. I’ve read that shiitakes can be soaked overnight, and that would give me an earlier start to my recipe the following day. I couldn’t be more impressed with the quality, the appearance and the integrity of this purchase.

The mushrooms were as expected. Flavor is fine. I have only cooked with them once since receiving. The instruction say to soak in cool, not hot, water for 2 hours. I soaked 5 mushrooms for 2 1/2 hrs and the two larger ones were still not softened. I used the harder ones anyway and could not tell the difference in the final dish.

I paid $30 for this garbage. They smelled like gasoline and I threw them out to get the smell out of my kitchen.