Mushroom ‘Cuisine Bags’ to debut at Fancy Foods Show

The Mushroom Benefit is rolling out an innovative line of Cuisine Bags set to redefine the soups, stock and sauces retail market.

Each mesh sachet — about twice the size of a tea bag — contains a unique blend of exotic mushrooms and natural seasoning and flavors that endow any savory stew, soup, sauce, or marinade with a gourmet touch in a single easy step. The startup will launch the new product line at the Summer Fancy Foods Show at the Javits Center in New York on June 23-25.

The patent-pending Cuisine Bags offer a plant-based, clean-label alternative to traditional powdered soup stocks. They also make a convenient quick-fix solution for preparing sophisticated cuisine that demands minimal expertise and that can readily conform to the time constraints of modern life, turning home cooking into a gourmet experience in just 15 minutes of infusion in boiling water.

“As consumers, we are exposed daily to a glut of cooking TV shows, chef blogs and restaurants,” said Mira Weigensberg, CEO and co-founder of The Mushroom Benefit and a natural sciences graduate. “Is it any wonder that we all want to cook like chefs and receive compliments from our family and friends, as well as benefitting from all the health advantages of using natural ingredients and herbs?”

Each sachet infuses natural, full-bodied flavors of umami and additional herbs to enrich any dish. The Mushroom Benefit selected a choice mix of exotic mushrooms, principally shiitake and black truffle, to deliver maximum taste enrichment. The shiitake mushroom was chosen as a base due to its rich umami characteristic that imparts a meaty, savory sensation to foods.

The mushroom flavors in each portion are easily incorporated into any stock. Incorporating food technology and advanced product design, the equivalent of a meal portion of fresh mushrooms is condensed into a small sachet. Immersing just one sachet, directly or after steeping in hot water, yields enough flavor to amply enrich more than a liter of product, which is sufficient for 7-8 servings.

Each Mushroom Benefit Cuisine Bag package contains five sachets. The bags themselves are made of 100% natural and wholly biodegradable corn fiber, demonstrating the company’s commitment to careful utilization of natural resources and reducing packaging footprint.

According to Weigensberg, health-conscious consumers placing a higher value on more naturally processed, “free-from” food attributes is propelling the abandonment of one of the cornerstones of the traditional kitchen: soup powders and ready-made sauces which often contain MSG, artificial ingredients and sugars.

“Our product is vegan-friendly, contains zero sugar and sodium and no added MSG or artificial coloring or flavoring — it only contains natural ingredients,” Weigensberg said. “Moreover, the mushrooms’ umami factor significantly lowers the need to enhance savory flavor with salt.”

The cuisine bags are available in three flavors: Asian, Italian and “Classic.”