The Best Mushroom Growing Kits for Beginners
This article contains links to our partners in Amazon associates, although our opinions here are genuine, we were gifted the mushroom kits, but we’ve enjoyed using them so much we had to write a review. We will receive a commission if you click any of the links in the article and purchase a Grow your own Mushroom Kit. We use this money to continue investment into the running of this site. So it helps us to keep cooking!
A Review of Grow Your Own Mushroom Kits
The Review Highlights:
These boxes are relatively cheap
There is a variety of unusual fungi to choose from
We had one that had been contaminated and the customer support was excellent in replacing it
They are so weird and cool to watch grow
They only require two sprays of water a day - simple!
You gain 2-3 crops with each crop providing for at least three meals. Which makes this fun and on par with buying fancy mushrooms from the supermarket
They are absolutely delicious!
These kits are really eco-friendly
Smart Mushrooms Growing Kits
Takes 14 days from first spray to harvest, and is super easy and really tasty. See below for the full review.
Smart Mushrooms Grow Your Own Kit
We were recently gifted a Smart Mushrooms Golden Oyster Growing Kit for Christmas. We’ve never tried growing mushrooms before, so we were a little trepidatious about how to plant them, water them and whether it would take a long time.
However, once we read the instructions, we were very pleasantly surprised! These kits are super low maintenance. To start the growing process, you simply open the hole in the front and cut back the plastic covering. Then it’s just a case of spraying the impregnated soil with water from the little spray bottle included ten times in the morning and ten times in the evening.
After about four days the soil started to change colour, and the first fungi stalks started sprouting from the box. At seven days, the first small yellow caps began to fold out and then they continued to grow until they were ready to start harvesting and eat.
We’ve included a recipe at the bottom of this review which we tried with the Golden Oyster Mushrooms - and they were delicious.
We needed to have two kits because the first was contaminated. We could tell because after a week of watering, the fungi hadn’t started to germinate and the soil had turned a strange red/black colour. However, one email to Smart Mushrooms and they immediately stepped in and replaced the kit.
What types of Mushroom can you grow?
Golden Oyster Mushroom XL Harvest
These oyster mushrooms are nutty and tender, especially good in Asian cuisine (see our recipe below) - but equally tasty just cooked in butter on toast.
These oyster mushrooms have a similar flavour to roasted cashews and are quite meaty, which makes them a good alternative to pork or chicken to make meals vegetarian.
They are known for wellbeing benefits such as reducing lipids and being antihyperglycemic.
Blue Oyster Mushroom XL Harvest
Blue oyster mushrooms are meatier and earthier than the Golden Oyster variety. They thrive in areas of good ventilation and can also be eaten raw.
They are best however in stir fries, with a little oyster sauce, and noodles or rice. Blue Oyster Mushrooms are a really good meat alternative to create a filling, tasty vegan variant of your favourite dish.
From a wellbeing point of view, Blue Oyster Mushrooms are a really good source of protein and fibre.
Pink Oyster Mushroom XL Harvest
Pink Oyster Mushrooms are the most delicate of the three varieties on offer from Smart Mushrooms. The caps are much thinner, but have a greater surface area, while the flavour is woody, compared to the earthy blue and the nutty golden.
The texture is more velvet than the other two options too. Vegans use Pink Oyster Mushrooms as an alternative to bacon.
Is it Cost Effective to Grow Your Own Mushrooms?
At the current time of writing, these grow your own mushroom kits costs around £14.99 - and they should give you two to three crops before you need to discard them. Tesco finest oyster mushrooms (which aren’t as tasty as the golden variety) current retails at £2.00 for 150g, which is about enough for one meal for four people or two people for mushrooms on toast.
We are currently halfway through our first crop, and we’ve already used around 300g with half the mushrooms still to eat. So by my calculations, this means we should get £24 worth of mushrooms from a box costing £14.99
This means, at current standing, and with a performance like we had - yes, it is cost effective. If you compare the cost against normal white or button mushrooms, then it isn’t. But this is a gourmet variety and is on a whole other level than normal mushrooms when it comes to flavour.
There is another consideration if you are interested in growing your own mushrooms - it’s really fun and exciting without a lot of effort! It has been fascinating coming into the kitchen every day to find out how much the fungi have grown and then plan the right recipes to make the most of the mushrooms. In terms of maintenance, a quick spray in the morning and another in the evening has been all it takes.
How to cook your crop from Grow Your Own Mushroom Kits
Golden Oyster Mushroom and Bacon Puff Pastry Tart
Ingredients
150g x Golden Oyster Mushrooms from a Grow Your Own Kit
3 x rashers of bacon
20g x salted butter
1/8th x sheet ready rolled puff pastry
Serves 2 for lunch, or with sides for a dinner
How to make your Golden Oyster Mushroom Tart
Preheat the oven to 200C (190C fan)
Wipe down the Golden Oyster Mushrooms carefully using some dry kitchen towel
Slice the mushrooms lengthways into two or three depending on the size of the fungi
Take a baking sheet and place your puff pastry rectangle on it
Make a cut in each corner and then fold over the sides to make a lip which runs the whole way round.
In the centre of the pastry add the bacon so it covers the base
Scatter the Golden Oyster Mushrooms over the bacon
Season with ground black pepper to taste
Dot the butter on top of the mushrooms
Place in the oven for 18-20 minutes, until cooked, risen and golden
Eat and enjoy!
Growing Your Own Mushrooms can also help the environment
Smart Mushrooms have put a lot of thought into how they produce these mushroom kits. The company was founded by Sam when he was just 16 years old and has been recognised as a new start up of the year, and this forward thinking has framed their approach to producing these kits.
Each grow-your-own mushroom kit has been grown on recycled oak sawdust, and the production process is reliant on solar power rather than fossil fuels. Also when you buy a Smart Mushroom kit, a portion of the profit supports fungi research. This is on top of reduced delivery, growth and packaging impacts that normally come from buying food from supermarkets. So not only can you have fun, eat great gourmet mushrooms at a fraction of the cost - BUT you’re also doing it in an eco-friendly way.