An experimental study was performed to determine the characteristics and drying process of mushroom (Lentinus edodes) by 6 different hot-air drying methods namely isothermal drying, uniform raise drying, non-uniform raise drying, uniform intermittent drying, non-uniform intermittent drying and combined drying. The chemical composition (dry matter, ash, crude protein, crude fat, total sugars, dietary fiber, and energy), color parameters (L, a*, b*, c*, and h0) and rehydration capacities were determined. Among all the experiments, non-uniform intermittent drying reached a better comprehensive results due to the higher chemical composition, better color quality associated with high bright (26.381±5.842), high color tone (73.670±2.975), low chroma (13.349±3.456) as well as the highest rehydration (453.76% weigh of dried body). Nine kinds of classical mathematical model were used to obtained moisture data and the Midili-kucuk model can be described by the drying process with the coefficient (R2 ranged from 0.99790 to 0.99967), chi-square (χ2 ranged from 0.00003 to 0.00019) and root mean square error (RMSE ranged from 0.000486 to 0.0012367).