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When using various types of mushrooms, how would you cut them to get the most out of each type?

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Recorded

This event was on September 29, 2026

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to course-specific questions, to how to turn your cooking passion into profit or simply hearing the perspective of a professional chef, Chef Dan is ready to answer them all.

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Question

Hilda P J

When using various types of mushrooms, how would you cut them to get the most out of each type?

Answer

So that really depends on what you're doing with the mushrooms, right? So there are a lot of different cuts for the different mushrooms. A lot of times, even for a trumpet mushroom, I'll take a fork along the stems and shred them so they kind of look like a pork kind of style or a shredded chicken. But I could use that same mushroom and cut it into round disks and sear it to be able to make it like a scallop-like texture. I could also just dice that and use it into a stir fry to be able to make just a nice even cook on that at the same time. If you're doing something like portabellas, I would definitely de-gill them first. So take a spoon and get all the gills off the bottom. And then, for even cooking, you can do the slice on that to be able to put into tacos and stuff like that. But again, just doing a dice on that will make it cook evenly, and you can add that to all kinds of other things too. So again, it really kind of depends on what you're making on what cuts will work best for you.

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

*Dan Marek* is a chef educator who has been teaching vegan and vegetarian cooking for over 15 years. At Rouxbe, he is our Director of Plant-Based Culinary and Development where he helps develop content, classes and builds courses for many of our partners. Dan is a board member of Slow Food Austin, the Institute of Child Nutrition, and Conscious Capitalism. He has earned his BA in Journalism from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and holds certificates in Nutrition from Cornell University. Prior to his role with Rouxbe, Dan worked with Whole Kids Foundation training teachers and food service at schools across the country on nutrition and culinary best practices. He also worked as a Healthy Eating Educator at Whole Foods Market’s flagship store in Austin, TX, was a personal chef for some of Austin’s elite business people, taught classes in culinary techniques at Austin Community College, The Natural Epicurean, and Le Cordon Bleu. Dan also regularly volunteers cooking or speaking about nutrition for the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Marathon Kids, Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and the Ronald McDonald House Charities of Austin and Central Texas.