Guy Fieri's Microwave Trick For Instant Mushroom Broth

With so many convenient boxed stocks and broths available on store shelves these days, it might seem tempting to reach for them instead of making your own. However, there are many reasons why it's worth the effort to make broth from scratch instead. For one, it's generally cheaper to make your own, especially if you're using what would otherwise be food waste, like vegetable scraps, shrimp shells, and bones. Secondly, you can control what goes into your homemade broth — including the salt level, and you can omit ingredients you can't have due to allergies, intolerances, or preferences.

While beef, chicken, vegetable, and bone broth are all popular choices, you'll find an underappreciated culinary ally in mushroom broth. Brimming with deep, complex, umami flavor, it makes an impressive base for vegetarian soups, braises, and marinades and a hearty cooking liquid for grains and legumes. Mushroom broth can be more expensive and difficult to come by than its counterparts, but celebrity chef and TV personality Guy Fieri has a simple hack that will have you hunting for all kinds of delicious mushrooms to try out.

While flexing his plant-based cooking skills at the 38th Food & Wine Classic, Guy Fieri told Food & Wine that DIY mushroom broth is fast and easy. He explains that you simply plastic-wrap your washed mushrooms and microwave them to your liking. Then you reserve the liquid that comes from the shrooms and use it in place of water. Per BBC goodfood (via the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition), microwaving mushrooms is a great way to preserve the nutrients that would otherwise be lost to lengthier cooking methods. BBC adds that you don't need to include anything else — including high-fat frying oil.

Another reason it's great to make your own mushroom broth is that all non-frozen broths should be used within around a week. If you're heavy-handed with them, you'll have no trouble using them up — but many home cooks might only need a cup or so, leaving the rest to spoil in the fridge and take up space as it does. Rather than take a gamble with your ready-made mushroom broth, buy fresh mushrooms as you need them. You can use mineral-rich white mushrooms, shiitakes, creminis, porcinis, oysters, portobellos, king trumpets, and more. If you're fortunate to have knowledge of and access to safe, edible wild mushrooms, you can use morels and other foraged finds.

According to Modern Farmer, mushroom broth has been gaining ground, filling a niche in the health and wellness space over which bone broth reigned for years. They report that mushroom broth has similar positive effects on the body, enhanced by the inclusion of medicinal mushrooms — like reishi, chaga, lion's mane, maitake, and shiitake — that are loaded with antioxidants and adaptogenic compounds. Healthline tells us that mighty mushrooms also bring rare non-animal-source vitamin D to the table along with selenium, riboflavin, niacin, and fiber. Use mushroom broth where you'd use bone broth — including in a filling, frothy broth latte. It'll make the perfect foundation for recipes like Guy Fieri's green bean casserole with mushroom gravy or jagerschnitzel with bacon mushroom gravy.

What's more, mushroom broth offers naturally meaty, satisfying flavors that typically come from animal foods, making it suitable for vegan and vegetarian dishes. For recipe ideas, check out Food Network Kitchen's microwave mushroom risotto, or Wolfgang Puck's mushroom soup – subbing the chicken stock for the mushroom broth to double down on savory, nutty, earthy flavor. Mushroom broth can be your new go-to base and why not? Guy Fieri's a real fun guy (pun intended), so follow his advice all the way to Flavortown.