Rules for soaking honey agarics before cooking

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Honey mushrooms are one of the most common mushrooms. In our country, they are loved, they come up with many recipes, they willingly go to the forest for them. These mushrooms are quite unpretentious, you can perform many culinary operations with them in order to achieve a variety of tastes and textures. One of these operations - soaking honey agarics - is used for completely different purposes, but mainly before cooking.

Rules for soaking honey agarics before cooking

Features of the procedure

A frequent question: why do you need to soak honey mushrooms at all? Specifically, before cooking, this is done in order to get rid of poisonous and, in general, substances not very useful for a living organism, which are contained even in all edible mushrooms.

There is a fairly common opinion that only freshly picked mushrooms are soaked in order to clean them of traces of earth and other things.

However, mushrooms can be soaked in any form: both dry and fresh. Now let's figure it out in more detail.

• Dried: quite often, in order to preserve mushrooms for a long time and use them in cooking for a long time, they are dried and then stored in dark rooms. Starting to cook, for example, soup, mushrooms are mistakenly thrown into a saucepan in the hope that they will swell right during the cooking process. This strategy is wrong. It is recommended to soak the mushrooms before placing them in the pot. So they will definitely reach the peak of their readiness, they will be tasty and non-tough.
• Fresh: soaking them should be done after thorough cleaning and cutting off excess parts. This is done not only for additional cleaning, but also for the prevention of poisoning. Soaked fresh mushrooms can also be put into dishes immediately.
• Fresh and dry: general soaking of such mushrooms is one of the few known methods of preparing mushrooms. This option is beneficial if you have few fresh mushrooms to cook. A dish made from such a mixture will be healthier and tastier, because when using only dry preparations, the food is unlikely to retain the rich mushroom taste, and a large amount of fresh mushrooms can make the broth too concentrated.

Remember to soak honey mushrooms correctly, no matter what condition they are in. When mushrooms are soaked incorrectly, it will most likely simply not give the desired result, but will only waste your time.

How to soak properly

Both dry and fresh mushrooms are soaked according to the same principle. They are immersed in a large tank with clean, and most importantly, cold water, having previously been cleaned of any kind of contamination.

It is very important to change the water in the vessel at least 2-3 times during the entire soaking process. This is of particular importance if the whole procedure takes place before cooking, because all harmful compounds must come out of the mushrooms.

Mushrooms release toxins when soaked

Agarics should be soaked with the expectation that dry specimens will increase dramatically and several times. It is better to distribute the mushrooms so that there are a little more fresh ones in the vessel, for example, in a 2: 3 ratio.

How long to keep mushrooms in water

The soaking time depends on the condition of the product: 1 hour is enough for freshly picked mushrooms, and with dry mushrooms, the situation is a little more complicated:

• if they were dried naturally, then they should swell quickly (in about 3-4 hours);
• if the oven was used to dry the mushrooms, it is better to leave the mushrooms in the water overnight, because the heat of the oven is able to bring the mushrooms to the most severe condition.

Irina Selyutina (Biologist):

Although dried mushrooms are usually soaked in water, it is often recommended to do so in milk. Soaking time is a relative concept. Normally, you need to soak until the mushrooms return the amount of water removed by drying and return to the "before drying" state. Of course, it will not be one to one, but properly soaked, they will become soft.

Despite soaking, dried mushrooms will still retain some hardness that distinguishes them from fresh ones.

In what other cases should you soak

Mushrooms are soaked not only before cooking. Experts recommend carrying out such a process in many other situations:

1. For a thorough cleaning after the forest. It is better to use lightly salted water - it eliminates possible worms inside the mushrooms. To do this, we take 1 tbsp for 2 liters of water. a spoonful of coarse salt (and not necessarily iodized).
2. Before pickling or pickling. Can be soaked for 30 minutes.
3. To protect against blackening. In this case, the mushrooms are immersed in water with a little vinegar.
4. If you have purchased dried mushrooms and you are not sure about the drying quality. In this case, soaking will help both remove debris and prepare the mushrooms for subsequent cooking.

Conclusion

It is not difficult to soak honey mushrooms, while such a procedure is extremely necessary, it should not be skipped. Take the time to soak your mushrooms before cooking. Only in this way will they benefit and be absolutely safe.