Not All Shiitake is the Same

Not presume to dictate, but broiled fowl and mushrooms - capital thing!
~Charles Dickens

Shiitakes mushrooms are grown 2 ways, on hardwood logs or on sawdust blocks.

Highest quality shiitakes are grown on oak logs. It takes 6-18 months to colonize the whole log which is then soaked to produce mushrooms. Moisture in combination with cold triggers the reproductive cycle of the mushrooms. A log can produce for four years yielding larger crops as the log matures.

Sawdust blocks are made of sawdust (surprise!). The blocks are inoculated then incubated for 1-4 months. They are then soaked in water to produce mushrooms. Some nutritional content may be added during this process, because the sawdust grown shiitakes are not as full of protein and vitamins as the log grown mushrooms.

Note: There are a plethora of recipes available for shiitake mushrooms. My favorite thing to do with any mushrooms is just to throw a few in to whatever I am cooking.

Something else I learned: If you are buying shiitake mushrooms at the grocery store, you are most likely getting the type grown on sawdust blocks (no matter how expensive they are).