How to freeze chanterelles correctly? Sometimes after freezing, chanterelles develop bitterness. How to freeze chanterelles in the refrigerator - helpful tips.
Novice mushroom pickers do not always know how to freeze chanterelles correctly. Hence the statement that these mushrooms acquire bitterness after freezing. Fresh chanterelles can be stored for no more than a day. If there are a lot of mushrooms, then they must be quickly processed.
Mushrooms can be salted, but the beneficial properties of chanterelles are lost from the effects of salt. The easiest way to preserve is to freeze and store in the fridge freezer.
Before freezing in any way, the mushrooms must be prepared, following simple rules.
There are only two most popular freezing methods.
First way. The washed mushrooms are placed in containers or bags and placed in the freezer. But with this method of freezing and long-term storage, sometimes they have a bitterness that spoils the preserved mushrooms.
Second way. With this method, the mushrooms do not taste bitter, but they lose some useful properties. Pour the mushrooms with water and bring to a boil. You can add salt to boiling water. It is recommended to boil for no more than twenty minutes. After boiling, the mushrooms are washed in running water and laid out on paper napkins in one layer to dry. After drying, spread in a thin layer on a tray and place in the freezer. Next, the frozen chanterelles are laid out in bags and placed in the freezer for storage.
Every mushroom picker knows the value of chanterelles. These mushrooms are almost never wormy, have a pleasant taste and contain a huge amount of vitamins and minerals. In order to be able to enjoy them not only in season, housewives make preparations from chanterelles for the winter, using simple recipes such as preservation, drying and freezing.
Chanterelles are famous for their delicate, nutty flavor. The presence of protein and vitamin B in these mushrooms makes them very beneficial for the human body. They contain beta-carotene necessary for vision, and it is he who gives the yellow color to chanterelles. And the high content of copper and zinc salts makes them extremely important for the full functioning of the body.
How chanterelles grow
Harvesting chanterelles by such methods as conservation, drying and freezing leave a good share of nutrients in the chanterelles. Therefore, they will benefit the body throughout the winter.
In order for the harvesting to be successful, it is necessary to collect the mushrooms in the right conditions. Do not collect chanterelles after a long heat. During an increase in humidity after a long drought, mushrooms absorb harmful substances from the air: thus, the risk of food poisoning increases. Also, do not take damaged and old mushrooms with obvious signs of decay.
Collect only good mushrooms: no damage or wormholes
It is necessary to harvest chanterelles for the winter on the day of collection: forest mushrooms (like some types of berries) cannot be stored raw for a long time - the risk of food poisoning increases.
Before preserving the chanterelles for the winter, it is necessary to carry out a number of preparatory measures:
After carrying out the preparatory work, you can start harvesting chanterelles for the winter. Chanterelles can be preserved both by salting, pickling and frying mushrooms. The result is delicious and varied dishes.
Salted mushrooms are the best snack for the winter. Chanterelles can be salted in a cold and hot way. The recipes are pretty simple.
Cold pickled chanterelles
Cold way: This will require 1.5 kg of fresh mushrooms, vegetable oil, dill, garlic (3 heads) and salt.
Hot canning of chanterelles
Hot way... For this method, you will need 1 kg of chanterelles, 8 dried spicy carnation flowers, 8 leaves of laurel, 4 tsp. salt, 6 cloves of garlic and allspice.
These recipes differ from salting by the presence of vinegar in the brine, but this does not make the mushrooms less tasty. For example, we will describe the simplest recipes.
Pickling is an equally popular way of preserving chanterelles
Chanterelles marinated with onions and garlic:
For the marinade, you need to mix vinegar and 500 ml of water, add spices and boil for 5-7 minutes. Cut the onion and garlic cloves into 4 pieces. Arrange the prepared mushrooms in sterile jars, fill with marinade. Wait 5-10 minutes, pour the marinade back into the pot and boil it for 2 minutes. Pour the mushrooms in the jars with them again, close the lids and roll up. The workpiece is cooled upside down at room temperature.
Blanks in cans
Important! To keep the chanterelle harvest throughout the winter, keep it in a cool place (cellar or refrigerator).
Pickled chanterelles with lemon:
Pour boiling water over prepared mushrooms, add salt and juice of two lemons. Put on fire and bring to a boil. Cook over low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring all the time and removing the foam. Drain and prepare the marinade: add vinegar and all the spices to 200 ml of water, pour in oil and cook for 5 minutes, strain.
Lemon juice gives mushrooms a spicy flavor
Pour the marinade over the mushrooms and boil again over low heat for 15-20 minutes. Arrange in sterile jars and roll up. Such a blank is stored for a long time and has an unusual spicy sour taste.
Important! Only mushroom caps are involved in pickling. To save money, the legs can be fried separately.
Chanterelles are one of the few mushrooms that can be harvested fried. You can roll up just fried foods, the most important thing here is to maintain proportion and sterility. Harvesting fried chanterelles for the winter involves very simple recipes.
Fried chanterelles - a completely prepared canned dish
Fried chanterelles with butter for the winter:
Fry the prepared mushrooms in a pan with vegetable oil. Fry the onions separately until golden brown. Next, combine the onion with mushrooms and add spices and salt to taste. Pour some melted butter into the bottom of a sterile jar. Then lay onions and mushrooms in layers. The last layer should be a large amount of butter, which will fill the voids and cover the mushrooms. The cans are rolled up and cooled. The workpiece is stored in the refrigerator.
The most important thing when preserving fried mushrooms is to maintain sterility.
Freezing chanterelles does not change their taste: just like fresh ones, they can be put in soup or fried. In order to freeze mushrooms, they must be washed, peeled and dried. Cut large caps in half.
Frozen chanterelles will fully preserve the taste and aroma of fresh mushrooms
Freezing raw is allowed, but it is better to boil the mushrooms for no longer than 5 minutes before the procedure so that they do not lose their aroma. It is best to freeze each mushroom separately, putting them on a sheet in one layer, then put them in bags and store in the freezer.
Important! Do not re-freeze mushrooms. Pack the chanterelles in portions so that the extracted blank can be used immediately.
Chanterelles tolerate drying well. Many mushroom pickers like this way of harvesting them for the winter because the chanterelles remain the same fragrant, and their nutritional value is also preserved.
Preparation for drying is the same as for freezing. Mushrooms are dried in a drying chamber or in a conventional oven at a temperature of no more than 60-65 ° C. Spread in one layer to completely dry the product.
Mushrooms prepared for drying
When the mushroom is dried properly, it bends, but does not break or crumble. Drying is stored in bags or closed jars. Before eating dried mushrooms, soak them in broth or water.
Harvesting chanterelles for the winter will allow you to enjoy the taste of your favorite mushrooms all winter, and sometimes even until the next season.
In autumn, after the rains, it is time to harvest. Those collected in the forest are much brighter in taste compared to. , which will be discussed, are recognizable by their unusual appearance and have excellent taste. It is customary to dry them,. But below we will talk about how chanterelles for the winter at home, because only this method of harvesting is able to preserve all the beneficial properties of mushrooms as much as possible.
Regardless of which method of harvesting will be chosen, they must be carefully sorted out, cleaned of debris and earth, and rotted places must be removed. Then rinse well from sand and dirt, pay special attention to the back of the cap, where almost all the dirt accumulates. Do not soak mushrooms in water. The lower part of the leg must be cut off. It is necessary to start processing chanterelles within the next 24 hours after their collection, as they deteriorate very quickly and toxic substances accumulate in them.
Did you know? In medieval France, it was believed that chanterelles increase libido, therefore they were included in the groom's menu without fail.
There are two ways to freeze. The first is when the mushrooms are frozen fresh. This method allows you to maximize all the beneficial properties of mushrooms, vitamins and minerals. The disadvantage of this method is that not all collected mushrooms are suitable for it. For raw freezing, it is necessary to select young chanterelles with an unopened cap. Large specimens acquire bitterness after this harvesting method.
Important!Another plus of freezing boiled mushrooms is that they take up less space, since they decrease in size during the cooking process.
The second method is freezing with pre-boiling. With this method, they do not taste bitter, but, unfortunately, during cooking they lose useful substances. There are several more points why chanterelles are bitter after freezing. Bitterness can appear if all preparation steps have not been followed, for example, removing garbage, rotting places, or long storage before freezing. Also, mushrooms collected during a dry period or if they grew in a coniferous forest have a bitter taste.
Freezing the chanterelles fresh for the winter, without cooking it is very simple, consider how to do it:
Did you know?The largest harvest of chanterelles - more than 72 tons per year - is harvested in Latvia. And the largest mushrooms of this variety grow in California, their average weight is about 0.5 kg.
So that old large specimens do not taste bitter, as well as mushrooms collected during a dry period, they resort to freezing them in a boiled form. Consider how to cook chanterelles for freezing:
Frozen chanterelles retain all their taste for 3-4 months, longer storage affects their taste. Obviously, when wondering how long you can store frozen mushrooms in the freezer, you should start from these terms and not keep them for more than 4 months.
So, the "quiet hunt" was a success, and the baskets are full of delicious red mushrooms. If it is impossible to cope with all the wealth at once, the question arises: how much can you store fresh chanterelles in the refrigerator?
The nutritional value of chanterelles is incredibly high; it is not for nothing that their use in food has a long history. The most delicious mushrooms are fried and stewed, as well as salted and pickled.
Before sending the trophy to the refrigerator, you should:
Do chanterelles need to be washed? If necessary, you can, but they quickly get wet and become watery. Therefore, it is recommended to wash them immediately before cooking, but if you intend to store them in the refrigerator, then you should not. When washing is still inevitable (there is a lot of dirt on the mushrooms), you should try to thoroughly dry the washed mushrooms on a towel.
The greatest nutritional value is inherent in mushrooms 5 hours after harvest, then they lose their beneficial properties.
Many mushroom pickers successfully store the collected delicacy in the refrigerator. up to five days, but experts say that the guaranteed safe stay of fresh, untreated chanterelles in the refrigerator is one day... After this time, it is better to boil or freeze uneaten mushrooms.
The most gentle way of harvesting is freezing. Mushrooms can stay in the freezer for up to 4 months, retaining most of their properties. It is important to remember that re-freezing of any food is unacceptable, therefore, it is better to arrange them at once in portions into trays or containers, counting on one preparation.
Before being sent to the freezer, the mushrooms can be boiled for about twenty minutes, or you can leave them fresh. Here are just raw chanterelles sometimes after defrosting turn out to be with bitterness, and with boiled chanterelles this is less common. Bitterness, however, does not depend on processing or storage, but solely on the place and conditions of mushroom growth. Most often, specimens collected among the spruce forest or in dry season can slightly bitter.
You need to defrost the mushrooms gradually, at room temperature, otherwise the taste will be lost. Alternatively, all the chanterelles can be fried and put in jars. In this form, storage of mushrooms lasts up to six months, and for consumption it is enough just to warm them up.
Boiled mushrooms are convenient because the semi-finished product is ready for quick use: fry mushrooms in oil with vegetables - and an independent dish or dressing for soup is ready. Boiled chanterelles will safely stand in the refrigerator for about 5 days.
In salted form, chanterelles are a spicy crispy cold appetizer or an addition to main courses. Salting is carried out in a container with oppression: boiled chanterelles are sprinkled with salt at the rate of 50 g of salt per 1 kg of mushrooms and kept under pressure for about a month.
The recipe for pickling looks similar: put the boiled delicacy in jars and pour it with a hot marinade made of water, vinegar, salt, vegetable oil and spices. It is better to store salted and pickled chanterelles in the refrigerator for no more than a year.
How many useful chanterelles are stored in the refrigerator:
Every lover of the ginger gifts of the forest probably has his own favorite method of preserving an appetizing delicacy for a long time. After all, it's a shame if you can pamper yourself with chanterelles only during a limited period of their collection, from August to October.
In addition, all methods of harvesting, with the correct recipe, retain the amazing taste and benefits of this mushroom. With a little effort, fragrant mushrooms, fried in butter or stewed with cream, may well be available all year round.
Wonderful red mushrooms, called sly chanterelles, are quite capricious in the case of creating winter supplies. Illiterate and mishandling of delicate mushrooms deprives them of their priceless aroma and adds bitter notes to the delicious taste. To avoid such incidents, you should thoroughly study the issue of winter storage of chanterelles. If you do everything right, in the cold season, chanterelles can be added to soups, salads, sauces, side dishes, and filling for pies.
Chanterelles are harvested at the right time. Do not “hunt” them after a long sultry weather. After a long dry period, during a period of increased humidity, the mushrooms are impregnated with harmful substances that come from the air space. As a result, there is a risk of mushroom poisoning. Do not put old chanterelles that have begun to rot in the basket. Of course, the collection of any mushrooms is carried out in a clean natural area; specimens that grow near highways and in industrial areas are not taken.
To begin with, they carefully sort out, choosing only whole, even, healthy specimens without damage to create the blank. Crumpled, crumbling chanterelles caught among the mushroom "catch" are advised to be eaten in the near future.
It is recommended to process mushrooms within sixteen to eighteen hours after harvesting. At a low temperature in the room, chanterelles are advised to store no more than a day. It is better to start processing immediately after going to the forest: the earlier the mushrooms are sent for storage after all the procedures, the more taste, vitamins and aroma will remain inside the product.
Frozen mushrooms can be stored for three to four months. If the temperature is eighteen degrees below zero, the chanterelles will "last" a whole year. But storage for a longer period is not carried out, because the product may deteriorate.
Chanterelles are frozen raw, fried or boiled.
Without preliminary heat treatment, mushrooms retain their pleasant smell and appearance much better. The downside of freezing fresh chanterelles is the likelihood of a bitter taste. To try to exclude this possibility, they choose only the highest quality and freshest mushrooms.
After selecting specimens suitable for freezing, they are wiped with a napkin, removing dirt, adhering twigs and blades of grass. Dry processing will help preserve the aroma better. If the mushrooms are too dirty, they are washed. Some people advise to soak the chanterelles for half an hour in a container of cold water so that all the dirt can soak off, after which the mushroom picker can easily remove all the debris and clean the mushroom. Others recommend rinsing the specimens immediately under running water, being careful not to immerse them too much in the water. Such a precaution is necessary so that the chanterelles do not absorb too much water, because after freezing it will turn into unnecessary ice.
The peeled mushrooms are laid out on a flat surface and placed in the freezer for ten to twelve hours so that each mushroom is frozen separately. After a specified amount of time, the mushrooms are packaged in pre-prepared containers. Do not put the entire crop in one container, it is better to divide the entire volume into several portions. Subsequently, this will help to exclude multiple freezing and thawing of the same specimens.
If the possibility of bitterness is frightening, the collected product is frozen in boiled form. Twice as much water is poured into the container in relation to the volume of the boiled chanterelles available. One to two teaspoons of salt is added to one kilogram of product. The processed mushrooms are placed in boiling water and cooked for five minutes over high heat. You can increase the cooking time to ten minutes, but it should be borne in mind that prolonged exposure to boiling water takes away the aroma from the chanterelles. During cooking, foam forms, which must be removed. Then the mushrooms are thrown into a colander and wait for the liquid to drain. At the final stage, the mushrooms are allowed to cool, then dried using a paper towel to remove excess water. The mushrooms sorted in portions are placed in the freezer.
Vegetable oil is poured into a frying pan, then the chopped processed mushrooms are placed and fried for twenty minutes until the unnecessary moisture evaporates. After cooling, the chanterelles are packed in bags and sent to the freezer of the refrigerator. Some immediately add greens and onions when frying.
Before preservation, the processed mushrooms are boiled for ten minutes, then the water is drained, new boiling water is poured and boiled again for twenty to twenty-five minutes. After cooking, the chanterelles are discarded in a colander. When canning, different methods are used: mushrooms are salted, pickled and fried.
Use the cold and hot method.
Processed mushrooms are fried with the addition of vegetable oil. Then they are mixed with pre-fried onions, salt and spices are added. First, a small amount of butter is poured into the jar, the onions and chanterelles are laid out. At the final stage, add a large amount of butter to fill the empty spaces. The cans are rolled up, cooled and placed in the refrigerator.
Two hundred milliliters of vinegar and five hundred milliliters of water are mixed, spices are added and boiled for five to seven minutes. Divide the garlic and onion into four wedges. Mushrooms are sorted into jars, poured with marinade. After ten minutes, the marinade is poured into a saucepan and boiled for two minutes. The marinade is again poured into jars, they are rolled up and cooled, turning over.
Before drying, mushrooms go through the same processing steps as when freezing. Chanterelles are dried in the oven at a temperature of sixty - sixty-five degrees, spreading out in one layer. A properly dried mushroom does not crumble or break. Dried chanterelles are stored in bags or jars.
If you approach the preparation of chanterelles responsibly, on cold winter evenings you can enjoy their wonderful taste with the whole family.