Many people are addicted to “Quiet Hunting,” as the mushroom picking is called.
Each type of mushroom has chosen for itself certain places, habitat conditions and on favorable days they appear quite a lot. And then an important question arises in front of the mushroom pickers: how to process the entire harvest, but so that it does not disappear during storage, it will not spoil.
Most often, the mushrooms are dried, and this process takes not so much time. Yes, and dried mushrooms can be stored even in small spaces.
Mushrooms are dried in the sun, in ovens, in the oven and in special dryers. From how correctly the drying was carried out, depends on their shelf life.
If the mushrooms were not sufficiently dried, then in whatever conditions they were stored, anyway, they will soon become moldy and disappear.
Before you put dried mushrooms in storage, you need to know the signs of well-dried mushrooms:
- when you press the cap of a dry mushroom moisture should not be emitted from it;
- dried mushrooms only bend slightly, but do not crumble or break.
How to store dry mushrooms
- Dry mushrooms are stored in gauze bags in a well-ventilated area.
- In the place where dry mushrooms are stored, there should not be any odorous substances and products, as porous mushrooms, like a sponge, absorb any odors. By the way, mushrooms are also well absorbed in themselves. Therefore, the room (cellar, storage room, pantry) should be completely dry.
- The temperature in the room where the mushrooms are stored should not be above + 12 °.
- To prevent spoilage of all dry mushrooms, they should be periodically reviewed, removing moldy and moist.
- If the mushrooms are slightly damp, they must be removed from the container in which they were stored, put on a baking sheet and dried in the sun or in the oven.
Dry mushrooms can be crushed into powder. This storage method has several advantages:
- The volume of dry ground mushrooms is much less than whole, therefore they take not so much place.
- Meals with dry mushroom powder are cooked much faster than with ordinary dried mushrooms, which are soaked for two hours before cooking.
- There are many proteins in mushrooms, thanks to which mushrooms can be put on the same level as meat. But mushroom proteins are digested only by 41%, because the rest of the percentage of mushrooms consists of fiber, which is not absorbed. And mushroom powder makes any dish easily digestible.
- For mushroom powder, only perfectly clean mushrooms without sand, grass or ash impurities are suitable, because the powder is added to the dish without additional processing.
How to cook mushroom powder
Dried mushrooms are broken into pieces, and then ground in a coffee grinder or blender. Then the mushroom powder is sieved through a sieve, and the remaining large pieces are ground again.
This mushroom powder can be prepared from one type of mushroom, and you can combine several. For example, to improve the taste of the powder from black mushrooms (aspen or boletus) add powder of valuable white fungus. Or they combine the mushroom powder from butter, boletus, boletus and esenia. Dry mushroom powder is stored in glass (less often metal) jars with hermetically closed lids in a dry place.
Dried mushrooms can be stored without loss of nutritional properties for two years, but it is better to update stocks annually.
Vacuum storage of dry mushrooms
Some experienced mushroom pickers use this method:
- Take a well-dried sterilized jar with a hermetically screwed lid.
- Dry mushrooms are put in the jar.
- Alcohol is dripped onto the inside of the lid and set on fire.
- The bank is quickly sealed.
Oxygen, which was in the bank, disappears in the process of burning, and the fungi are in complete vacuum. Such mushrooms are stored in a dry cool place for a very long time. But the disadvantage of this method is that if the sealing is done incorrectly, and oxygen remains in the jar, then the pathogens will start to develop in the mushrooms. These mushrooms can later be poisoned.
Helpful information
- Dry mushrooms should be soaked in cool water for two hours before use.
- Mushrooms can be soaked in milk, then in finished form they will look like fresh ones.
- Water from under dry mushrooms can be used to make sauces or soups.
