How To Use Noma Projects Mushroom Garum

A hot pan of browned mushrooms will tell you more about Mushroom Garum than tasting it from a spoon.

Cook the mushrooms until they have taken on real color. Add butter, then a small pour of garum, and let it reduce for a minute or two before tasting. Straight from the bottle it is salty, earthy and concentrated. In the pan, much of that intensity disappears into the mushrooms and leaves them tasting deeper.

Noma Projects uses considerably more of it than most people probably would on a first attempt. Their mushroom cream sauce calls for 45 grams of Mushroom Garum with 400 grams of mushrooms. The mushrooms are browned first, then butter, garlic and garum go into the pan before the cream.

You can stop before the cream and take the pan somewhere else. Spoon the mushrooms over toast or polenta. Add pasta. Loosen the browned bits with a little stock and serve them with chicken. Finish with herbs and eat them next to potatoes. Once the garum has cooked into the mushrooms, it no longer feels much like using a condiment.

Mushrooms are not required, either.

Noma Projects dilutes Mushroom Garum with water for the cooking liquid in one of its risottos. That technique translates easily to ordinary cooking. Rice, lentils and braised vegetables all need liquid, and soup often needs more flavor long before it needs more ingredients. A small amount of garum turns plain water into something much more useful.

It will not taste like chicken stock or vegetable stock, and there is no reason for it to. What matters is that the water now carries some savory weight.

Keep the salt shaker out of reach until you have tasted the dish. Mushroom Garum contains plenty of salt already.

The roast chicken recipe from Noma Projects goes in a different direction. Mushroom Garum is mixed into softened butter, then worked underneath the skin of the bird before roasting. That mixture is worth borrowing even if a whole chicken is nowhere in the plan.

Try it on roasted potatoes. Melt it over cabbage or carrots. Put it on toast before adding mushrooms. Stir some into rice at the end of cooking. Green beans are good with it. So is a baked potato.

White beans may be even better.

A bowl of beans with olive oil, lemon and Mushroom Garum needs very little else. The garum supplies some of the savoriness that might otherwise come from bacon, sausage or a meat stock, while the beans still taste like beans. Lentils and chickpeas respond in much the same way.

Tomato sauce is worth testing once you know the bottle a little better. Add a modest amount after the tomatoes have cooked down, then taste. Garum is particularly helpful when the salt and acidity seem right but the sauce still lacks depth. It can do something similar in gravy, mushroom soup, braised greens and the juices left in a roasting pan.

Fish sauce is probably the closest comparison in terms of how to think about using it, even though the flavors are different. Plenty of cooks add fish sauce to food without wanting the finished dish to taste of fish sauce. Worcestershire, anchovy, miso and soy sauce often work the same way. Their contribution can be hard to identify once everything is together, but noticeable when it is missing.

Mushroom Garum belongs in that company.

Noma Projects has pushed it into less obvious places too. Their Mushroom Garum recipes include potato rösti, ramen, bean salad and mayonnaise. In one preparation, egg yolks sit directly in Mushroom Garum before being emulsified into mayonnaise. Cep Oil, their porcini-infused finishing oil, is used there as well.

You can get to that later.

For the first few meals, use the bottle with food you already know. Put some into mushrooms. Add it to beans. Mix it into butter. Try a little in soup or a pan sauce. Dilute some with water the next time you need a quick cooking liquid.

The patterns become obvious fairly quickly.

Shake the bottle before using it and refrigerate it after opening. Noma Projects recommends using it within three months. It contains 7 grams of salt per 100 milliliters, so add the garum before making the final call on seasoning.

Shop Noma Projects Mushroom Garum at The Ambrosian Pantry →

For the story behind the bottle, read Noma Projects and Mushroom Garum, or browse the full Noma Projects collection.