Shiitake
Lentinula edodes
A wood-decay mushroom, not a plant. Dried caps are a pantry umami bomb; soaking liquid is stock. Encyclopedia custom text is kitchen-true.
GROW → HARVEST → EAT → DRY → POWDER → CAPSULE → GUMMY — forms are not equivalent. Food first.
Identity
Also called: shiitake-mushrooms
What it is
A wood-decay mushroom, not a plant. Dried caps are a pantry umami bomb; soaking liquid is stock. Encyclopedia custom text is kitchen-true.
From the existing encyclopedia
Shiitake mushrooms deliver umami from glutamates and nucleotides, used fresh or as dried caps that rehydrate in broth. Dried shiitake stems flavor stock; caps slice for stir-fry. Soak dried caps 20–30 minutes; reserve soaking liquid as stock. Mushrooms are food SKUs with short shelf life fresh; dried forms suit pantry shipping.
Edible portions
- fruiting bodies
Absence of a portion from this list means it is not treated as food here — not that every other part is toxic.
Growing
- Climate. Cultivated on logs/blocks; temperate
- Light. Shade (cultivation)
- Soil. n/a — grown on hardwood logs or sawdust blocks
- Planting. Inoculate hardwood logs or buy blocks. Not a soil crop.
- Harvest. Caps as the veil breaks, still slightly in-rolled.
Processing, drying, storage
- Drying. Dehydrate until snap-dry; they keep for months. See also Make → Drying.
Preparation and culinary uses
- Sauté, dry, soak for stock; stems flavor broth
Nutrition and compounds
- Plant compounds. guanylate (umami nucleotide), ergosterol (a vitamin D precursor if UV-exposed). Presence is not a dose, a cure, or a reason to buy a capsule.
AAA interpretation Food first. These associations explain why a plant shows up in a nutrient conversation — they are not a supplement shopping list.
Safety
- Cultivated mushrooms from known spawn. Do not ‘approximate’ wild look-alikes.
Next steps
Sources
- USDA PLANTS Database — taxonomy and range (verify current entries)
- USDA FoodData Central — nutrient profiles for foods (verify current entries; this page does not invent milligrams)
- State cooperative extension growing guides — verify for your region
- Integrated from the existing aaaLifetime / quantum-biohack encyclopedia corpus (unique text preserved where it was not boilerplate).
Honest incompleteness is preferred to fabricated completeness. If a section is missing, no record for it is attached here — not a claim that the plant lacks that characteristic, and not that it was omitted as a secret.
Internal quality class A. Strong page: distinctive plant facts plus practical growing or kitchen use.