Shelf life of frozen mushrooms in the freezer

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Everyone wants to preserve fragrant and tasty mushrooms for a long time. If preservation is not included in your plans, and you need to keep the product fresh, you can use freezing. Mushrooms lend themselves to freezing, but storing frozen mushrooms has some peculiarities that must be observed.

Shelf life of frozen mushrooms in the freezer

How to freeze fresh mushrooms

The simplest is to freeze fresh mushrooms in a freezer. Such a process does not require additional manipulations and a lot of time:

1. Choose as fresh as possible: its further state after defrosting depends on the freshness of the product.
2. Choose small young mushrooms with a tight and dense structure.
3. Thoroughly clean the mushrooms from earth, leaves and unwanted films.
4. Cover a cutting board with cling film, put the mushrooms at a short distance from each other, but so that they do not touch and send them to the freezer for a couple of hours.
5. After this time, carefully pour the frozen product into prepared clean bags, preferably with a zip lock, and send back to the freezer.

If the mushrooms are large enough, you can cut them into large pieces.

In its original fresh form, mushrooms can be stored in the freezer for no more than one year - with a stable temperature regime of the freezer.

How to freeze boiled or fried mushrooms

It is also easy to freeze boiled wild mushrooms, but this process takes a little more time than freezing a fresh product:

1. Boil water first.
2. While the liquid is boiling, peel the mushrooms, remove all litter, earth and films. Dip the product in boiling water and cook for no more than 5 minutes.
3. After boiling, place the mushrooms in a colander or sieve and drain completely.
4. When they cool down, arrange in portions into prepared bags or special containers and send the semi-finished product to the freezer.

Fried mushrooms are frozen according to a similar principle:

1. Clean and wash the product thoroughly.
2. Cut into small slices and fry in vegetable oil or lard with onions or neat.
3. It is worth frying until the liquid has completely evaporated: it will take no more than a quarter of an hour.
4. After frying, cool and put in bags and store in the freezer.

Braised or baked mushrooms are frozen according to a similar scheme: cleaning, cooking, cooling, freezing.

With any of these methods, frozen mushrooms can be stored for 1 to 1.5 years.

The nuances of the workpiece

Mushrooms need to be thawed in the refrigerator

Frozen mushrooms can become unusable after defrosting if some rules are not followed.

In order for the mushrooms to remain elastic, aromatic and tasty, the following nuances should be considered:

• thorough cleaning before freezing itself;
• complete evaporation of the liquid during cooking;
• mandatory room temperature of the thermally processed product before placing it in the freezer - hot mushrooms form condensation, which will lead to the appearance of ice crystals on the surface of the mushrooms;
• defrosting the product exclusively in the refrigerator (to prevent loss of elasticity).

Best stored in portions so that it can be used to create a single dish.

Irina Selyutina (Biologist):

• When storing in bags, arrange the mushrooms so that you get packages of different weight (for a holiday it is more convenient to defrost one more than a whole mountain of small ones).
• To prevent mushrooms from losing their aroma and taste when frying before freezing, fry them in the oven.
• Boiling before freezing is perfect for those mushrooms that, from your point of view, have somewhat lost their appearance, but they are very tasty and cannot be thrown away.

Do not re-freeze food or send it back to the freezer. This will affect not only the quality of the product, but also the aroma and proper taste. Therefore, try to spread out the workpieces in small, disposable portions.

How much can you store in the freezer

So, you can store frozen mushrooms in the freezer for a little over a year, but in order to fully enjoy the taste and smell of natural forest mushrooms, it is recommended to use them within 6 months.

Store frozen mushrooms at a stable temperature of -18 ° C. Lower temperatures are undesirable and can spoil the texture and appearance of the finished product.

The taste, appearance and elasticity of thawed mushrooms depends not only on the correctness of the freezing and storage process, but also on which varieties were used for these purposes. Honey mushrooms, fragrant chanterelles, forest mushrooms, boletus mushrooms, tender boletus and boletus mushrooms will be the best option for harvesting mushrooms in winter. The rest of the species is best left for conservation or drying.

Conclusion

Knowing all the intricacies of storage and proper preparation for freezing, you can get an ideal, aromatic and tasty addition to any dish. The frozen product can be used for savory pastries, added to baked vegetables, stews, supplemented with this ingredient in soups, pickle, borsch, yushka, soup or fish soup.