Freshness Guide: Reading Harvest Dates

A mushroom does not have a use-by date so much as a curve. It is at its best in the first forty-eight hours and declines from there in ways you can see and smell before you can taste.

Oyster mushrooms hold four days if they were chilled promptly. Watch the edges of the caps: when they start to curl upward and dry, you are on the last day of good eating. They will still work in a curry.

Pink oysters are the outlier and the reason we built same-day matching at all. They have a genuine two-day window. On day three the colour goes and the texture turns limp — no chiller saves them.

Button mushrooms are the most forgiving, holding a week from harvest. The tell is the gill line under the cap: closed and pale is fresh, open and brown-grey means use them today.

Shiitake sit somewhere in the middle at five days fresh, but they are the one variety that arguably improves dried. If you are not going to get to them, dry them rather than losing them.

This is why every listing on the marketplace carries its harvest wording rather than a shelf date. A shelf date tells you when a shop wants it gone. A harvest time tells you what you are actually buying.