adminToday I was making boeuf bourguignon for the birthday celebration of Mandy and her father. One of the ingredients is Parisian mushrooms. Years ago, when I was still addicted to watching cooking videos on YouTube, I saw a fancy Michelin chef demonstrate how they peel mushrooms for their restaurant.
And honestly… with fine dining, all that labour-intensive, almost pointless work just feels like showing off. None of the mouths I’m feeding today would ever notice whether the mushrooms are peeled or not. So what’s the point?
There’s a myth that you can’t wash mushrooms with water because they’ll soak it up like sponges and become less flavorful. But Heston Blumenthal proved that this is nonsense. Mushrooms barely absorb extra water because they’re already full of it. So if you want to remove dirt, it’s perfectly fine to rinse them. Peeling them also works. Of course, it’s just a more pompous and time-consuming way of getting the same result.
Before we continue, here’s how to peel a mushroom, in case you ever feel like doing something unnecessarily fancy. Hold a small, sharp knife at the tip between your index finger and your thumb. First, cut off the dry end of the stem (no need to chop off the whole thing, that’s just wasting good food). Start at the base of the stem, scrape a bit of the skin, and with some finesse peel it upward toward the cap. Work your way around. Congratulations. You’ve peeled your first mushroom. Only twenty more to go.
The next step depends on how you like your mushrooms. You can halve them or quarter them. For my boeuf bourguignon, I halved the tiny ones and quartered the big ones. I had 500 grams of squeaky-fresh mushrooms, and from the outside I could already tell how fresh they were. Their color, the tight skin, no exposed spores. But something else gave it away.
I peeled all of them without music. No phone. No laptop. Just me, a knife, and two boxes of mushrooms. And because there was no noise, I noticed something new: the fresher the mushroom, the harder it is to peel. And when I cut them in half from stem to cap, there was this little snapping sound, like a bit of tension releasing right as the mushroom split with barely any pressure. The fresher the mushroom, the louder the snap.
It was strangely relaxing. Satisfying, even. Doing this unnecessary little task with full attention.
And now comes the moment you’ve been waiting for, the real reason why your grandmother’s food always tastes better.
Chefs who say “love” is the secret ingredient are lying to you. Love is not something you can sprinkle into a pot. But effort, patience, and care? Those you can taste.
Your grandmother doesn’t have to rush to work. She doesn’t have a hundred notifications screaming for her attention. She can take her time to cut, peel, stir, and stew. Not because she treats cooking like open-heart surgery, but because she has the space to do each step with care.
These days, in a world that gets louder and faster, it feels like we don’t have time for anything. But that’s not true. Time hasn’t changed. We just have too many options. Too many things pulling at us. Instead of saying yes to everything, it might be better to focus on just one thing.
And sometimes, that one thing is doing something meticulously. Like peeling a box of mushrooms. With care. With patience. With precision.
When you do that, time doesn’t speed up or slow down.
It just… disappears.