Content
- Cleaning porcini mushrooms - How to do it right
- Determine porcini mushrooms correctly
- Pre-clean porcini mushrooms in the forest
- Careful, maggots!
- Clean porcini mushrooms - step by step
- Why not wash mushrooms if possible?
- Tips
Porcini should not be washed
Cleaning porcini mushrooms - How to do it right
The cep, also known as the male mushroom, is probably the most sought after of all forest mushrooms. The noble mushrooms taste particularly good freshly fried in butter, but they can also be well preserved by drying and freezing. Since the mushroom belongs to the mycorrhizal mushrooms and lives mostly in a close symbiosis with spruces (but also other tree species such as beeches, oaks or pines), it can not be grown in the home garden. If you want to eat boletus, you have to go looking for it yourself in the forest - or you're in luck, and you can buy a bowl of fresh specimens in the supermarket.
Determine porcini mushrooms correctly
Congratulations! They were successful and found some magnificent porcini mushrooms or even collected a whole basket. But before you make yourself proud to go home and process your find, you should take a closer look at the mushrooms: There are a few species that are very similar to cep. These are not necessarily poisonous, but taste different and may be processed differently. Caution is especially important when inedible bile-Röhrling. This differs by the usually darker and coarser stalk net as well as the brighter hat of the cep. If flesh and tubes turn blue on printing or on bleeding, they are usually also the edible chestnut pipe.
Pre-clean porcini mushrooms in the forest
In order to be able to determine the type of fungus safely, you should not cut off the specimens that have been found on the stalk, but carefully unscrew them with a knife. The lower part of the stem covered by the earth is essential for the determination. If you are sure about the type of fungus, you can rough it already in the forest: Vermilions and eaten areas are generously cut away, also clean the fruiting bodies of adhering soil and other parts of plants such as leaves or needles. After the determination, you can also cut away the lower part of the stalk, if it is heavily soiled and can not be cleaned.
Careful, maggots!
Porcini are not only popular with humans, they are also eaten by snails, maggots and other creatures. Maggots are found mainly inside the mushroom, where they work their way up from the bottom up. With a bit of bad luck, it can happen that an externally still good looking boletus inside is already eaten bald. For this reason, you should always cut boletus in the forest lengthwise and remove any messed up inside generously. Strongly eaten mushrooms should not be taken.
Clean porcini mushrooms - step by step
Arrived at home, the collected mushrooms are to be cleaned and processed immediately. Due to the very high content of protein and water, forest mushrooms in particular spoil very quickly and should therefore not be left lying around at room temperature for a few hours. If the mushrooms can not be consumed immediately, clean them thoroughly and then beat them in a clean cloth or paper. Stored in the fridge compartment, they last up to two days.
And so you clean the sensitive mushrooms:
In most cases, these measures are sufficient for cleaning. Only with older specimens it may be necessary to peel both the stem and the hat.
Why not wash mushrooms if possible?
Now the cleaning of the porcini mushrooms is quite tedious and tedious - some people would like to make it easier, and simply wash the fruiting bodies instead of brushing them off. However, this step is recommended only for very heavily soiled specimens that are not otherwise clean enough. To do this, place the cut and maggot-controlled mushrooms in a sieve and rinse thoroughly with a strong jet of water. Then dry carefully with a dry cloth so that the mushrooms do not absorb too much water - they are not in vain called "mushrooms" in Bavarian. Mushrooms soaked in water quickly become mushy and lose much of their aroma.
Tips
Caution: Porcini mushrooms, which are available at the supermarket, are mostly from Eastern Europe and may be heavily contaminated with heavy metals or radioactive substances. Since in Germany wild mushrooms may be collected only for low self-consumption and porcini mushrooms can not be bred, forest mushrooms are always imported for commercial sale. This also applies to some other species, such as chanterelles.