Content
- How to properly store and preserve fresh mushrooms
- Pay attention to freshness when shopping
- To prefer young mushrooms while collecting
- Keep fresh mushrooms properly
- Prepare mushrooms for preparation
- How to make mushrooms last longer
- Freeze
- dry
- Tips
In the refrigerator mushrooms should be kept unwashed
How to properly store and preserve fresh mushrooms
The cultivated mushroom - which is available in the varieties white, brown and stone mushroom - is today the most cultivated mushroom. It is freshly available in the supermarket all year round, but often in large packages of 500 grams or more. If you do not need so many mushrooms at once, you can make mushrooms last longer by storing them properly. Much more tasty than the cultivated variety is the meadow mushroom, which can be found especially on humid weather on meadows, fields, pastures and in parks and gardens. Here it grows exceedingly numerous, so that a part of the yield must be frozen or dried.
Pay attention to freshness when shopping
Due to their high water and protein content, all mushrooms are perishable. For this reason, you should pay attention to freshness when shopping: especially sold in plastic packaging mushrooms are fast bad. But you can recognize fresh mushrooms by these characteristics:
Spotty and musty smelling mushrooms can leave you in the supermarket calmly - these will not deliver the expected mushroom aroma even with immediate preparation due to the lack of quality.
To prefer young mushrooms while collecting
If you collect meadow or other edible mushrooms, you prefer young, closed or semi-closed specimens. The bigger a fungus is, the older it is - and often already spongy in the flesh and infected with maggots. Because the protein content of mushrooms is up to 75%, they are as perishable as fresh meat. Often it happens that hungry snails and beetles have preceded the collector and have already nibbled the mushroom. You can remove these feeding spots together with the boarders with a clear conscience with the knife.
Keep fresh mushrooms properly
Fresh mushrooms should be prepared immediately after purchase or collection, because then they taste best. If this is not possible, you can store the mushrooms in the refrigerator at temperatures between one and seven degrees Celsius for up to four days. You should note the following rules:
Although mushrooms should only be cleaned before preparation, this only applies to purchased specimens. Even collected meadow mushrooms can already be roughed up at the site and remove damaged spots and maggots at home. Unpurposed wild mushrooms can otherwise be eaten in the fridge by undiscovered maggots.
Prepare mushrooms for preparation
Like all mushrooms, you should always clean the mushrooms dry and never wash, otherwise they absorb unnecessary moisture. Otherwise you need a kitchen board, a pointed kitchen knife, a mushroom brush (or a round brush) and paper towels for cleaning. First, the mushroom hats are cleaned with kitchen paper or cockroaches with a knife. Often it is sufficient if the fungus is simply rubbed off with your fingers. Then the stem is cleaned by scraping and cutting. Remove any remaining dirt with a mushroom brush or a fine brush. Collected mushrooms then cut lengthwise to check for grubby feeding. Finally, the mushrooms are cut into slices or coarse pieces as desired.
How to make mushrooms last longer
If you want to preserve the mushrooms or even a mushroom dish prepared with them, you can either freeze or dry the cleaned and cut mushrooms. Mushrooms are also very good for cooking or awakening or preserving in vinegar or oil.
Freeze
Frozen at about minus 18 degrees Celsius, fresh mushrooms last up to six months. For this purpose, only freeze the mushrooms in a freezer, not in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. This does not reach the temperatures required for a longer shelf life, which is why preserved mushrooms must also be consumed within a short time. Prepared mushroom dishes must be fresh and flash frozen immediately after cooking or frying, as they spoil very quickly and harmful bacteria can settle. They stay in the freezer for a maximum of two to three months.
dry
Mushrooms are relatively easy to dry, which is best done in a special dehydrator. If you do not have one, you can also dice the sliced mushrooms on a baking sheet in the oven. Preheat the oven to 50 ° C to a maximum of 70 ° C and clamp a wooden spoon between the door and the oven to allow escaping moisture to escape. The procedure takes several hours.
Tips
From dried mushrooms, you can make a mushroom powder, which is wonderfully suitable as a seasoning for soups, sauces and other dishes. All you have to do is grind the dried mushrooms, for example in a coffee grinder.