| porcini mushrooms - 1 kg milky caps - 1 kg bay leaves, black currant leaves cherry leaves, dill, dill flowers peppercorns, dried cloves garlic, vinegar, salt, sugar |
Pickling mushrooms is one the simplest and most common ways of preserving them. Mushrooms preserved in a strong salty solution are used for soups, side dishes, appetizers, marinades, and stews.
Nearly all kinds of edible mushrooms can be pickled, including porcini and milk cap mushrooms. In order to be salted, the mushrooms should be fresh, large, not overly ripe, without worms and not crumpled.
The main difference between pickling and marinades is that marinades use a vinegar base.
There are different ways of making preserves depending on why kind of mushrooms you have. For example, the milky cap mushrooms should be kept in water for a few days, periodically replacing the water several times a day. They are then placed in an oak barrel, salted, and left for several weeks. But you can get great mushrooms even without all this effort and oak barrels.
How do we salt porcini mushrooms:
1)First of all, we have to clean them. Take the skin off the stalk and wash the cap, then cut off the bottom part of the stalk. We’ll leave the little mushrooms as they are, but we’ll chop the larger caps and stalks into several pieces.
2) You’ll need about two cups of water and 40-50 grams of salt per kilogram of mushrooms. We need the salt to dissolve and the water to come to a boil.
3) As soon as the water starts to boil, throw the mushrooms in and stir to keep them from burning since there’s relatively little water. The mushrooms get boiled down and become smaller, as a result. We’ll have to boil them for 20-30 minutes.
4) The porcini mushrooms have been boiling for about 15 minutes now. We’ll throw in two bay leaves, a couple of peppercorns, and five dried cloves. After that, we’ll toss in two black currant leaves. Leave it to boil. When foam appears on top, carefully take them out.
5) The brine and mushrooms are boiled and ready to be jarred. First, wash the jars out and disinfect them in boiling water. We toss the mushrooms in first. Then we put a several whole sprigs of dill. Then add the brine.
6) Flip the jar over and let it cool in this position. The mushrooms will be ready in 2 months.
Let’s move to the milky caps:
1) We’ll wash and cut them the same way into roughly equal pieces.
2) You’ll have to boil the milky caps, too, before marinating them. Put them in boiling water for about 15-20 minutes.
3) After the milk caps have boiled, we take them out and let them sit a while. To make the marinade, we’ll need 2-3 cups of water and 1 cup of vinegar. We’ll add some pepper and cloves into the marinade, 4 teaspoons of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and 3 bay leaves. The salt and sugar should dissolve.
4) The marinade is ready, so we can get back to the milk cap mushrooms. We’ll boil them for 15 more minutes and they’re ready.
5) Now we’ll fill the jar. Place several garlic cloves in the jars, dill flowers, and cherry leaves. Of course, we should first wash and boil the jars. After we put the mushrooms in, we pour the marinade until it reaches the top.
6) Flip it over and let it cool. You can see how it turned out in 2 weeks’ time.
It’s best to keep your preserves in a dark, cool place.
NB! The mushrooms aren’t completely preserved in the salt solution since microorganisms are only slowed down, not stopped completely. The thicker the solution is, the better the mushrooms will be preserved. However, in such cases, the mushrooms became too salty and lose their nutritional value. Weaker solutions experience lactic fermentation in addition to the mushrooms, a fungus, fermenting. While this kind of fermentation is not harmful, it does give the mushrooms a bitter taste that makes using these mushrooms in cuisine next to impossible.
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