Mushroom cleaning rules
Cleaning the mushrooms is a mandatory procedure after harvesting the mushroom harvest, even if you think the mushrooms are clean. The quality of the prepared dishes depends on the correctness and timeliness of its implementation.
Mushroom cleaning rules
Basic Rules
For those who harvest the mushroom harvest on their own, the mushroom cleaning procedure begins already in the forest:
- fruit bodies are sorted according to their appearance, throwing them out with foci of mold, with worms and large overgrown ones;
- large forest debris is removed from the cut mushroom: branches, foliage, needles;
- the entire mushroom leg is cleaned of the remnants of sand and earth and cut to believe in worminess.
The main rule when cleaning is timeliness. With a long stay in a warm room without processing, the mushrooms lose their appearance, become flabby and, as a result, deteriorate, becoming unusable. Clean mushrooms properly by processing them immediately after harvest.
If it is impossible to clean the mushrooms after harvesting, it is permissible to store them in the refrigerator for 24 hours.
For cleaning, you will need a convenient knife with a thin tip, which removes spoiled fragments and debris remaining on the mushroom surface. The knife blade must be sharp and not thick in cross section, so as not to crush the mushroom structure, but to easily cut it. To wipe off stubborn dirt, a damp cloth is also required (not sold in the kit, just a cloth moistened with a little water).
Mushroom juice can stain the skin, so gloves are used as protection.
For further cooking, make slicing, preferably in equal parts. A mushroom stem with a fibrous structure is divided with a knife across, a round mushroom cap is cut into small triangles (or other shaped fragments - all at your discretion).
Washing mushrooms
It is not always justified to include rinsing in water in the procedure for cleaning mushrooms. So they gain a large amount of moisture, losing their taste, therefore, in the absence of the need for washing, it is better to limit themselves to dry cleaning with a knife and wiping with a damp cloth.
It is not necessary to soak mushrooms in water to dry and fry.
For soaking after dry cleaning, use cold water with the addition of a small amount of salt. This allows you to get rid of the worms remaining in the mushroom pulp.
Mushrooms intended for salting are soaked for 1-3 days, regularly changing the water to fresh.
Features of cleaning different types of mushrooms
Each mushroom variety has its own peculiarities, how to clean them properly.
Porcini
Porcini mushrooms are easy to peel
White is easy to clean, since its growth sites are dry areas and moss. They remove the remnants of the earth from the leg and wipe the hat. The spoiled fragments are carefully cut off.
Wormy mushrooms can be dried. When dried, the worms crawl out, while the dense structure of the porcini mushroom retains its beneficial properties.
Boletus and boletus
Boletus and boletus are often wormy. They immediately check the leg by cutting off the tip.The large caps are separated and cut in half, also to check for worminess. More often the worms are located in the lower part of the cap, leaving the upper intact, therefore the spongy layer must be removed with a knife.
The leg is cleaned by removing the top layer. The skin is sometimes peeled from the cap, although this is not necessary.
Butterlets
The grease is difficult to clean due to the slippery surface of the cap. After heat treatment, the film covering the cap becomes coarse and bitter, therefore it must be removed.
To prevent the slippery film from sticking to your hands during the cleaning process, it is permissible to dry the oil slightly or pour over boiling water.
In young specimens, only the mushroom leg is pruned. In adults, the top layer is additionally scraped off from it and the “collar” under the hat is removed.
Chanterelles
Chanterelles contain a substance that scares away worms, so you do not need to clean chanterelle mushrooms. Their pre-culinary processing is limited to cutting off the lower third of the leg, where pieces of earth remain. They do not peel off the chanterelles and do not cut off any parts.
The only difficulty encountered in the process of cleaning these mushrooms is their unusual cap shape, represented on the underside by thick pseudo-plates, between which debris gets stuck. Soaking allows you to get rid of it, which is useful for chanterelles to give elasticity and strength.
Ryzhiki and honey agarics
Honey mushrooms and mushrooms are considered the purest mushrooms. To clean them, it is enough to remove the adhering foliage and needles, cut the tip of the mushroom leg with earth or sand and remove the rotten and darkened fragments.
Irina Selyutina (Biologist):
Despite the fact that mushrooms are considered a little problematic mushrooms from the point of view of cleaning, this procedure is important for them. Especially when you consider that these are lamellar mushrooms, which means that a variety of forest debris can be crammed between the plates. An old toothbrush can help clean the plates.
Gingerbreads can be salted using two options: cold and hot.
If you decide to salt these mushrooms in a cold way, then their preparation should be thorough, including preliminary soaking for 30 minutes and final soaking for 1 hour, where 3 tbsp is taken for 5 liters of liquid. l. salt. This will remove all debris completely.
With hot salting, cleaning looks much easier and you need to boil the fruit bodies for 15 minutes in water with a little salt and citric acid after removing the dirt and rinsing.
When cleaning honey agarics, you need to sort them out, cut off long legs and remove rotten areas on the caps. The legs can be dried and processed into a powder - a flavorful addition to soups or sauces in winter, so that there is a reminder of summer.
Champignon
Small young mushrooms are hardly cleaned, they only remove the adhering dirt from the surface of the caps with a damp cloth, since during the washing process they lose their taste, strongly gaining water. In adult large specimens, many prefer to remove the skin that has lost its attractive appearance from the cap. This is done with a knife, moving from the edge towards the center of the cap.
The "collar" (skirt) of the champignon is edible; it is often not cut off.
Large champignons have stiff legs, so they are shortened or removed altogether.
Oyster mushrooms
Oyster mushrooms growing on tree trunks are almost always clean, without grass and needles. At the initial stage of sorting, specimens are left whose caps do not exceed 10 cm in diameter.
Cleaning is limited to cutting the leg and removing damaged areas. Oyster mushrooms can be washed and soaked, which further simplifies the cleaning process.
Milk mushrooms
Milk mushrooms are classified as mushrooms, which must be soaked before cooking, therefore, it is easy to clean the mushrooms from dirt by placing them in water. Cold water can also be a way to get rid of the bitter taste.
Containers with soaked milk mushrooms must be placed in a cool place so that the mass does not sour.
Soaked milk mushrooms with a brush, knife or hard sponge are cleaned to white, damaged areas are removed, then finally washed.
Conclusion
Cleaning mushrooms is an important procedure that allows you to preserve the quality and taste characteristics for their further preparation.
