A little reason to celebrate
National Mushroom Day
Food · Nature · October 15
A day for mushrooms, the fungi that turn up in soups, on pizzas and on damp forest floors, and for cooking with them and learning how they grow.
National Mushroom Day falls on Friday, October 15, 2027. That is 353 days away.
A mushroom is the fruiting part of a fungus, the piece that pushes up above the soil or out of a log. Most of the organism stays hidden underground as a web of fine threads, and the cap and stem you see are how it spreads its spores.
In the kitchen, mushrooms do a lot with very little. Button mushrooms, cremini and portobellos are the same species at different stages of growth, which surprises people who have bought all three in one trip. Shiitake bring a deeper, smoky taste, and oyster mushrooms cook up soft and ruffled. Most of them release water as they cook, so they brown best in a hot pan with some room around each piece.
People often mark the day at the stove. A plain sauté with butter and garlic is a common start, and mushrooms also go into risotto, omelets, gravy and stuffing. Others head outside to look at mushrooms in parks and woods, where they show up on stumps, lawns and leaf litter after rain. Looking is the safe part. Many wild mushrooms are poisonous and some resemble edible kinds closely, so foraging for food belongs to people with real expert training.
If you want to see the spores for yourself, set a fresh cap gill side down on a sheet of paper and cover it with a bowl overnight. By morning it leaves a print, a faint pattern of lines in brown, white or black.
Ways to celebrate
- Try a mushroom variety you have never cooked, like shiitake or oyster.
- Make a spore print from a store bought mushroom cap.
- Look for mushrooms on a walk after rain, and photograph them without picking.
- Brown sliced mushrooms in a hot pan and taste the difference crowding makes.
Dates
| Year | Date |
|---|---|
| 2026 | Thursday, October 15 |
| 2027 | Friday, October 15 |
| 2028 | Sunday, October 15 |
| 2029 | Monday, October 15 |
| 2030 | Tuesday, October 15 |
All national days on October 15
Also on October 15
Categories: Food daysNature days