Porcini powder substitutes

This is the real answer and it costs nothing extra, because bagged porcini powder is simply dried porcini in a grinder. The taste is identical, sometimes better since you are grinding it fresh and the aroma has not sat on a shelf. The one thing to get right is the maths: whole dried porcini and porcini powder are wildly different by volume, so never swap a tablespoon of pieces for a tablespoon of powder.

Best for

dry rubs, risotto, ragu and bolognese, pasta sauces, compound butter

Use a clean coffee or spice grinder and pulse until it is a fine dust, then sieve out the woody fragments. Dry the pieces in a low oven for ten minutes first if they feel at all bendy.

The closest widely available alternative and a genuinely good one, because shiitake is even higher in the savoury compound that makes mushroom powder work. What changes is the aroma: shiitake is brothier, slightly sweeter and has a faint sulphurous, almost bacon-like note, where porcini is woodsy, nutty and honeyed with a hint of pine. In a beef ragu or a rub the swap is barely noticeable. In a porcini risotto, where the aroma is the entire dish, you will taste that it is not porcini.

Best for

ragu and bolognese, beef rubs, braises, stocks and broths, gravy

Grind dried shiitake caps and discard the tough stems, or grind stems separately and use them in stock where the grit does not matter.

The cheap supermarket bags of mixed dried mushrooms and the jars of generic mushroom powder are usually built on milder species such as oyster, black fungus and cultivated shiitake, sometimes with a token amount of porcini. Expect a general earthy savouriness with much less perfume, which is why you need more of it. Good where mushroom is a background note; thin where it is the headline.

Best for

soups, gravy, veggie burgers, stews, seasoning blends

Taste a pinch dry before you commit. Strength varies enormously between brands, far more than with pure porcini.

If you have dried porcini pieces but no grinder, soak them in just-boiled water for 20 minutes and use the liquid. The flavour is authentically porcini, arguably more so, but it is water, which changes what you can use it in. Wonderful in risotto, braises, ragu and gravy. Completely unusable in a dry rub, a spice blend or anything you are dusting onto meat before searing.

Best for

risotto, braises, ragu, gravy, soups

Strain through a paper coffee filter or leave the bottom spoonful behind. Dried porcini almost always carries grit and it will ruin a sauce.

Delivers savouriness and nothing else, which is worth knowing before you use it. It will make a mushroom-free dish taste deeper and better seasoned, but there is no woodsy aroma at all, and nutritional yeast adds its own nutty, faintly cheesy flavour and visible yellow flecks. Use it when the goal is simply more savoury depth, not when the recipe is trying to smell of the forest floor.

Best for

vegan gravies, soups, lentil dishes, pasta sauce

Blitz the flakes to a powder first if the dish needs to look smooth, and add the MSG only if you already keep it.

Sometimes the truthful answer is that nothing reproduces the porcini aroma, and pretending otherwise makes a worse dish than accepting the gap. In a risotto or a pasta, if you cannot get any mushroom product, do not fake it with paprika or bouillon. Add a little more butter and a little more aged cheese, which gives you richness and savouriness, and let the dish be a good buttery Parmesan risotto rather than a bad imitation of a porcini one.

Best for

risotto, pasta, polenta, emergency substitution

Not an option if the dish needs to be vegan or dairy-free, in which case use the shiitake or mixed mushroom route instead.