Experienced mushroom pickers treat a walk in the forest as a certain ritual. Families can spend hours walking and picking mushrooms, and at home carefully and lovingly clean them. They pay special attention to each one and wash them thoroughly. But not everyone knows how to process mushrooms correctly. If there are doubts about the quality, the product should not be consumed under any circumstances; it is better to throw it away immediately.
Processing - the basic rules of a mushroom picker
First of all, the mushrooms need to be sorted out and cleared of debris, sand, and soil. Then they are sorted and defective specimens are thrown away. Damaged parts are cut out with a knife.
The peel, if it separates well, needs to be removed. The mushrooms are washed. Afterwards they are folded back to dry.
How to process wild mushrooms
First, the processing takes place in the forest; you can clean off the dirt while you are in it. Then the mushrooms should be cleaned. The covering film is removed from russula and boletus.
Boletuses and boletuses are cleared of needles, leaves, and branches. Hats are cut. Mushrooms are inspected for worminess. If there are holes, the copies are thrown away.
Then the mushrooms are washed. This should be done in cool water. Milk mushrooms and white mushrooms are soaked before cooking.
Cleaning and processing porcini mushrooms
Boletus mushrooms are cleaned immediately after collection. It's better to do it outside. Treatment includes cleaning of dirt and leaves.
The harvest can be stored for no more than 4 hours. You can keep it in the cellar or refrigerator for a couple of days. Otherwise, the mushrooms will lose their flavor.
Pickle
If you are going to boil mushrooms for soup or pickling, then you need to wash them. “Knowledgeable mushroom pickers recommend soaking mushrooms for boiling or pickling for a couple of hours in salt water so that the worms, if you missed them, come out and float,” says Andrei Kolodyazhny. — But frozen mushrooms, if you didn’t pick them, can and even need to be washed. Water won’t do anything to them, but you will wash away all the dirt that you haven’t cleaned out before you.
Separately, I will say about boletus, from which the film must be removed before any preparation: they cannot be washed before this operation, they will become slippery. And besides, they will quickly become limp, absorbing moisture, and will be tasteless.”
Mechanical restoration
After harvesting, mushrooms such as oyster mushrooms should be processed immediately. If this is not possible, you can wait a couple of hours. Proper preparation includes following a number of rules.
Sorting
Regardless of the chosen type of preparation, mushrooms should be sorted (noble or not, edible/conditionally edible). For the preparation you will need to take medium-sized ones. Some mushrooms can be fried immediately, others require boiling (bull, goat, etc.).
Cleaning
You should get rid of insects and debris. A cloth is used for this. You can also process fruiting bodies with a knife. However, this is not a prerequisite.
Forest mushroom soup with celery and fennel
Photo: Hands neo-bistro
Recipe by Vyacheslav Kazakov, chef of Hands neo-bistro
Bouillon:
- 10 g dried whites
- 1 liter of water
- 15 g sun-dried tomatoes
- 50 g fresh tomatoes
- Black pepper, allspice, bay leaf, salt
- 50 g butter
Fried mushrooms:
- 500 g of forest mushrooms (porcini, chanterelles, honey mushrooms)
- 120 ml mushroom broth
- 50 ml white wine
- 30 ml cognac
- 20 ml vegetable oil
- 20 g butter
- Thyme, salt, black pepper
- 1 tooth garlic
Article on the topic
Secretive killers.
How do poisonous mushrooms affect the body? Pickled vegetables :
- 100 g celery root
- 100 g fennel
- 30 ml olive oil
- 5 ml apple cider vinegar
- Salt
To submit:
- 30 g pickled vegetables
- 5 ml truffle oil
- 100 g ptitim paste
- 40 g sour cream
- 5 ml green oil
Step 1. For the broth, add water to all ingredients, bring to a boil and simmer over low heat for an hour. Add salt, add spices, strain the finished broth.
Step 2. Cut the mushrooms into large slices, fry in a mixture of vegetable and butter with thyme and garlic, pour in wine and cognac, evaporate.
Step 3. Add mushroom broth, add salt and simmer until tender.
Step 4. Bring the broth to a boil, add fried mushrooms and salt, and boil. At the end add 50 g of butter.
Step 5. To prepare pickled vegetables, cut the roots into small cubes, season with oil, vinegar and salt.
Step 6. Pour the soup into a plate, add boiled poultry, pickled vegetables and sprinkle with green oil. Serve sour cream separately.
Methods for harvesting and processing mushrooms
The product spoils quickly. That is why it is not stored raw. It is better to process mushrooms on the same day they were collected.
Drying and drying porcini mushrooms
An excellent harvesting method is drying. The dried product retains excellent taste. During the drying and drying process, approximately 90% of the mass dries out, but the mushrooms become more aromatic.
The drying rules are as follows:
- The highest quality specimens should be selected.
- Mushrooms cannot be washed; they are cleaned with a cloth.
- Large specimens are cut into several parts.
- The lower part of the leg is cut off.
Drying mushrooms
If the product is soft, you need to dry it like this: put the mushrooms in glass jars along with garlic and pepper. Top them with olive oil.
The lids of the jars must be tightly closed. The jars need to be sent for pasteurization. They are placed in a pan with a towel previously placed on its bottom.
Fill the pan 3⁄4 full with water. Then it is put on low heat. After bringing to a boil, pasteurize the jars for 25 minutes.
Hot jars should be placed on a wooden tray. It's worth waiting until they cool down. Store dried mushrooms in the pantry.
Oven drying
To begin with, it is worth dividing the mushrooms by type and size (champignons, boletus, etc.). Then you need to prepare a baking sheet. It is sprinkled with a little oil.
The baking tray is covered with baking paper. Mushrooms are laid out. Their caps should be directed upward, and there should be 1 mm between each specimen.
Preparing mushrooms
After arriving home, you should immediately distribute them by type to make it easier to figure out how to process mushrooms and what to cook from them. Then you need to take a sharp knife and cut out all the dark places, and also check the product for the presence of insects or worms. The caps must be carefully wiped with a brush or brush, and then the tip of the stem must be cut off.
When all the mushrooms are cleaned, they should be washed thoroughly. But this must be done with extreme caution, since a long stay in water will not have the best effect on the quality, and their taste will change slightly. The mushrooms must be placed in a colander and rinsed a little with cold water, and then allowed to drain.
If you know how to properly process mushrooms, then the juice that remains should not be thrown away. It can be used to prepare other dishes.
If there are a small number of wormholes on the mushrooms, the product should be soaked in cold water, after adding salt. Then the worms will come out and remain in the container with water. In the case where the mushroom is very difficult to wash, since it is excessively contaminated, it can be placed in water and left for some time.
It is more convenient to wash in a basin or in a large saucepan. It is important that the mushrooms are covered with water. To prevent them from floating up, you can put plywood or a board with a small weight on top. Once the leaves and other debris are soaked, it will be very easy to separate them.
Those mushrooms that are intended for pickling must be soaked. For milk mushrooms, you should scrape off the top black layer with a knife, and for buttermilks, remove the films from the caps. When thinking about how to process volushka mushrooms, you should remember that they are soaked raw and then pickled.
Those species that contain milky bitter juice need to be soaked for 2-3 days, changing the water at least three times a day. It is better to place the container in a cool place so that the mushrooms do not sour.
Experienced mushroom pickers claim that soaking is not as beneficial as is commonly believed. This is due to the fact that along with bitterness, nutrients and protein substances leave, the nutritional value of the product decreases, and the mushroom becomes soft and flabby. Therefore, experts do not recommend soaking for more than 2 days. If you figure out how to process mushrooms, then after cooking they will always turn out delicious.
When sorting, you need to pay special attention to whether there are any poisonous species in the basket. Some toadstools are very similar to russula. You can distinguish them by their stem: if the russula is real, its stem is straight to the very base, while in a false mushroom it expands downward. It will also be useful for beginners to know that the skin of the toadstool cap is removed from the edge to the center. If there are doubts about the quality, you should never use them; it is better to throw them away immediately. You should not collect those mushrooms that grow near highways or landfills: they can cause severe poisoning.
How to clean porcini mushrooms before freezing
Mushrooms must be peeled before freezing. Then the cut located on the stem is renewed, and the skin should also be removed from it. If the specimens are large, they are cut.
Preparation
There is no need to wash porcini mushrooms. Cut them into small cubes. Then they can be boiled or fried for 12 minutes.
How to clean the cap of a porcini mushroom
The dry cap is easy to clean. Wet mushrooms should be wiped with a cloth. You can also use an old toothbrush.
Do I need to peel the stem of porcini mushrooms?
This should be done without fail. Moss, foliage, and needles need to be removed. If worms are visible, this part of the leg will have to be cut out.
Possible problems and ways to solve them
Even experienced mushroom pickers can confuse good specimens with poisonous ones. Boletus mushroom and gall mushroom are especially often confused. The latter differs in cut.
Boletus does not change its color even after marinating and cooking.
Another problem is spoiled adult mushrooms. If you find one, it is better to throw it away immediately. Old mushrooms are not only not healthy, but also tasteless.
Pickling
Most often, tubular types that do not contain bitterness are pickled. Small mushrooms are marinated separately, and large ones should be cut into pieces. The legs need to be separated from the caps, and they can be marinated either together or separately. Mushroom pickers advise selecting the caps and using the stems for preparing other dishes.
If the boletus is young, it is necessary to remove the lower film. It is more convenient to do this with the tip of a thin knife. The stem should be left a couple of centimeters from the cap.
Those mushrooms that will be pickled cannot be washed, as they will absorb water, which is extremely undesirable. It is better to wipe them with a damp cloth.
Useful properties of oil
Butter is an excellent low-calorie product. They contain only 19 kcal per 100 g. fresh product. And besides, they are digested rather slowly, and therefore leave a feeling of fullness in the stomach longer. For all these reasons, butternut squash is a great food for people looking to lose weight.
- Due to their high protein content, boletus serves as a good meat substitute for people following a vegetarian diet.
- Due to the substances they contain, boletus has a restorative effect on the human body, strengthens the immune system and helps resist viral and colds.
Maslyata is an excellent choice when you need to prepare a tasty and satisfying mushroom dish. There are a huge number of recipes for wonderful dishes made from these mushrooms, and anyone can replenish this piggy bank by happily experimenting in the kitchen with these tasty and affordable inhabitants of pine forests.
Rules for adding salt
Not all housewives know that mushrooms have a very delicate relationship with salt. When adding salt, it is very important not to overdo it.
When frying, spices can be added immediately, salt - at the end (Photo: Pixabay.com)
Why is this so? Everything is simple here: salt draws out moisture, which is abundant in mushrooms. If you add salt at the beginning of cooking, the mushrooms will not fry, but will cook in their own juice. Therefore, it is best to salt them at the end of cooking.
Preparation for the winter
During the harvesting process, mushrooms undergo two cooking processes: pre-treatment over fire and in marinade.
It is important to consider that with prolonged cooking, mushrooms lose their taste and fall apart.
Experienced housewives answer the question of how long to cook porcini mushrooms until tender:
- Initially, they are kept in boiling water for 15 minutes from the moment the water boils.
- All foam from the surface must be removed. Already in the marinade they are boiled for another 15 minutes.
- The total time is enough to produce a high-quality product.
The broth can be frozen and used as a semi-finished product when preparing sauces, gravies or soups. This is done in several steps:
- Cooking time depends on the condition of the mushroom (from 20 to 40 minutes).
- Place a plastic bag in a clean mayonnaise bucket.
- The broth is poured in. You need to leave a small margin to the edge, since the liquid expands as it freezes.
- The bucket goes into the freezer.
- The frozen liquid is removed from the mold and stored in a bag until required.
For freezing, prepare a concentrated broth at the rate of 200 g of mushrooms per 500 ml of water.
Cleaning mushrooms in the forest
It's no secret that mushrooms hide under leaves or fallen pine needles. Wet weather that persists during rains promotes strong adhesion of small debris to the caps and legs. Before you send the forest gift you like to the basket, you need to clear it of twigs and leaves. Then we have less work waiting for us at home to wash the hats. Sticky leaves and needles can be scraped off with a knife. If the mushroom has wormholes, they need to be cut off until dense pulp without holes appears. You can cut the mushroom in half to make sure there are no worms. We will carry out more thorough cleaning at home.
To make sure there are no worms, the mushroom can be cut in half
Add fat when frying
Many housewives try to use as much oil as possible when frying, believing that the product lacks fat. Such anxiety does exist.
Indeed, at some point during cooking, the mushrooms may actually be starved of oil. This does not depend on the number of stirrings, as many people think, but on the spongy structure of the mushrooms.
If you want to speed up the process without damaging the texture and color of the mushrooms, simply drizzle a little oil or fat into the pan periodically.
