Steam-First Sautéed Mushrooms

The modern way to brown mushrooms. Steam them in a splash of water until they collapse, let the water cook off, and only then add a little fat to brown them. They end up browner and much less greasy than the old dry-pan method, and they need a fraction of the oil.

The reason is in the Mushrooms dive: raw mushrooms are full of air pockets that soak up oil. Collapse those pockets first and there is nowhere for the oil to go. Nothing browns while there is water on the surface anyway, so steaming just gets that stage over with on purpose.

Untested as written: this is a technique recipe built from America’s Test Kitchen and Serious Eats, named in the Notes.

Ingredients

• 1 lb mushrooms (button, cremini, or mixed), sliced or quartered
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon oil
• 1 tablespoon butter (optional, for flavour)
• 1 garlic clove or 1 small shallot, minced (optional)
• Parsley or thyme, to finish

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Steam. Put the mushrooms, the water and the salt in a large skillet and cover. Cook over medium-high heat until the mushrooms have collapsed and released their liquid, about 8 to 10 minutes.
2. Cook off the water. Uncover and keep cooking, stirring now and then, until the pan is dry and the mushrooms start to squeak.
3. Brown. Add the oil and let the mushrooms sit undisturbed until browned underneath, then toss and brown again.
4. Finish. Add the butter and garlic or shallot for the last minute, then the herbs. Taste for salt.
5. The rule to remember: if the pan looks dry early on, do not add more fat. The mushrooms give it back once they collapse.

Notes

Where this recipe came from A technique recipe. America’s Test Kitchen’s method steams the mushrooms “in water until they collapse”, then adds “a mere ½ teaspoon of oil”. Serious Eats (Leah Colins, 2025) covers the pan, salts early and cooks “until mushrooms have released their liquid, 8 to 10 minutes”, then browns with the lid off. The earliest controlled comparison found was Dave Arnold and Nils Norén’s test in their Cooking Issues blog (21 December 2009). There, the soaked, crowded batch left “a significant amount of oil… in the pan” and “tasted better and less oily”.

Salting early Salting early is contested. The traditional rule is to salt late so browning is not delayed. With the steam-first method the water is being driven off anyway, and early salt speeds that up.

About the photo The photo shows browned mushrooms finished with parsley, from a roasting rather than this exact method.