OUTLOOK, Sask. – Smut isn’t pretty but it’s tasty in stews.
It’s also something most prairie growers hope never to see on their corn cobs, yet the bulbous, grey, spongy fungus is a delicacy that brings big dollars in select marketplaces.
Smut is used as mushrooms in Mexico and increasingly in trendy restaurants in the eastern United States.
It hasn’t yet caught on here, said Doug Waterer, a vegetable crops specialist with the University of Saskatchewan.
“Saskatchewan is a few years behind the culinary curve.”
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Waterer called it delicious and described its subtle flavour as a combination of sweet corn and musky mushroom.
It can be thrown in stews or dried, stored indefinitely and rehydrated for later use, he said.
Returns are about $2.50 for a handful of the fungus, as opposed to 10 cents for the cob it grows on.
He said American corn growers are reverting to older corn varieties without a resistance to smut to create this unique food product and some are even spraying their corn with spores known to produce smut.
While smut is not now commercially grown on the Prairies, Waterer said it could be.
It often shows up in backyard gardens where corn is well watered and planted on the same land base year after year.
The market is well served by growers in Mexico and the U.S., where moist, humid climates and tight crop rotations on a limited land base promote growth of the fungus.
Waterer conceded those growers have the advantage in growing it closer to where it is sold.