I like cooking asian and this often involves the use of dried mushrooms. They can easily be rehydrated with boiling water in a few minutes. While for wood-ear mushrooms boiling water is perfectly ok, some say that it is not for shiitakes and one should rather use lukewarm water (having to accept a longer rehydration time) in order to preserve flavour. I personally can’t find any difference, so I always use boiling water for both.
This video is about 20 minutes condensed to 1. The wood-ear mushrooms are perfectly good after about 12-15 minutes, whereas the thicker shiitake take at least 20 minutes to rehydrate. You can save the flavourful liquid from the shiitakes for later use (the wood ear don’t deliver any), for example as soup stock addition etc. And don’t forget to remove the stems.
