How to freeze mushrooms correctly. How to freeze porcini mushrooms

On fruitful days, mushroom pickers from "quiet hunting" return with full bags of mushrooms. Most of all, mushroom pickers are happy with sturdy beautiful boletus. This is what they call White mushroom.

The porcini mushroom is good in any form: both fried and boiled. It is dried, salted and pickled. But the most The best way preserve the natural taste and aroma of the mushrooms - freeze them.

After all, freezing preserves all useful substances, vitamins in mushrooms, as well as their natural taste, not altered by vinegar and spices. Moreover, the porcini mushroom lends itself well to freezing, remaining almost as light as it was fresh.

For freezing, those mushrooms that were plucked very recently are suitable - just a few hours ago. After all long storage mushrooms before processing significantly impairs their taste. And also mushrooms can just go bad.

How to prepare porcini mushrooms for freezing

Porcini mushrooms are sorted out, removing wormy and spoiled ones, cut off the edges of the legs.

Then the mushrooms are washed under running water. They should not be soaked, since any mushrooms, like a sponge, quickly absorb water, which will subsequently affect their quality when frozen.

Clean mushrooms are laid out in one layer on a cloth or paper towels and dried. To speed up the process, you can blot them with a towel and on top.

But, as practice shows, many hostesses do not wash the mushrooms, but only carefully clean off the adhering debris from the cap or wipe the mushrooms with a damp cloth, believing that the mushrooms do not need excess moisture. Moreover, raw mushrooms are not consumed, and in any case they are heat-treated.

Young mushrooms are frozen whole, and large boletuses are cut into thin slices or cubes. After all, the smaller the pieces are, the faster the freezing will occur.

To prevent the mushrooms from sticking together when frozen, they are first laid out in one layer on a tray and sent to the freezer for several hours.

When the mushrooms are frozen and firm, they are packed in plastic bags, tied well and put back in the freezer.

Chopped mushrooms can be immediately placed in plastic containers, covered with lids and stored in the freezer. But you need to remember that mushrooms cannot be re-frozen, which means that they must be packed in such portions that they are enough for one use, for example, for cooking soup.

How to freeze boiled porcini mushrooms

Peeled and washed porcini mushrooms are cut into slices, dipped in small batches in slightly salted (or without salt) boiling water and boiled for ten to fifteen minutes.

Then the mushrooms are placed in a colander or on a sieve and wait until all the water has drained off.

Mushrooms cool well.

Boiled mushroom slices are put in plastic containers, covered with lids and put into the freezer.

This method is suitable if the mushrooms were bought on the market and there is a fear that they were not collected in an ecologically clean area. As you know, mushrooms absorb both useful and harmful (toxic) substances from the external environment. And thanks to boiling, all harmful substances from the mushrooms pass into the water.

The advantage of boiled mushrooms over raw ones is that boiled mushrooms take up less space in the freezer, which is very valuable when the volume of the refrigerator is small.

The resulting mushroom broth is not poured, but boiled until it decreases in volume and slightly thickens. The broth is cooled, poured into small plastic bottles and frozen. This broth can be used in soups, sauces and other dishes.

Mushrooms are fried, stewed, boiled, salted, pickled. They can also be frozen. This makes it possible to use it in a finished form in winter. Fungi can be frozen raw, but it is better to rinse and boil them beforehand, as they have a lot of debris, sand, leaves, etc.

And also, because boiled they take up less space in the freezer. Housewives have disagreements about how much to cook mushrooms.

Before freezing

If you want to buy mushrooms from the market, then you need to buy them carefully. After all, you do not know where they were collected before. They could grow near the roadway or in places where there is. And since fungi take in all harmful substances, it is clear that there will be little benefit from them. It is better to collect it yourself, but you can do it if you are an understanding mushroom picker. This is important to know before freezing. If you are not very versed in their types, then you can mistakenly collect poisonous or hardly edible specimens and poison the whole family.

How to prepare

How much to cook Forest mushrooms? First, you need to sort them out, putting aside the old, wormy, wrinkled and stale. Stale ones are those that have lain for more than one day. You need to cook them on the day of collection. Some of them are good for salting, and some are just thrown away.

Mushrooms need to be cleaned of debris. Such as lines and morels can only be boiled after pre-processing. They have poisonous acid... However, after they are poured with water for an hour and a half, these substances go away. The water in which the morels were soaked can be drained, they are squeezed out a little, and clean water is added. How much to cook forest mushrooms before freezing? Not less than half an hour, or even more.

How to sort mushrooms

Before freezing, they are sorted: white, russula, boletus, boletus, boletus, mushroom, mushroom and boletus are divided into old and young. Some are good for pies, others for soups and snacks.

How much to cook mushrooms before freezing? They are boiled for five minutes (mushrooms), up to twenty minutes (aspen mushrooms), thirty (russula), forty (boletus mushrooms) and fifty minutes (boletus mushrooms).

You need to know that mushrooms with a tubular structure are less dense than lamellar ones. Honey mushrooms and chanterelles are tough. Honey mushrooms freeze their hats as a less tough part. They cook longer than the others. Cook until boiling, then pour the broth and, adding pure water, cook for about an hour. In the future, it is clear that the hardness will depend on how long it takes to cook fresh mushrooms.

After boiling, the mushrooms must be cooled, allowed to drain and put in the freezer. For freezing, they are divided into small portions and placed in bags. You need to understand that after you take the mushrooms for cooking, you cannot re-freeze them: they will deteriorate. They can be stored in the freezer for no more than six months.

How much to cook mushrooms?

Before freezing, housewives often have this question. There is no single answer to it. Some boil mushrooms for a short time, from five to ten minutes. The volume of mushrooms is reduced from this, but the undercooked ones will then have to be cooked longer when cooking. The freezing process itself will not cause any particular difficulties. Now that we know how much to cook the mushrooms before freezing, we will decide which of them is still better to freeze raw, and which we will heat-treat.

It is preferable to freeze raw. good varieties mushrooms: these are aspen - in general, those with a spongy surface under the cap. Chanterelles and mushrooms fall into the same category. It is not recommended to freeze these mushrooms for a simple reason: after defrosting, they will lose their taste and will be watery.

In old mushrooms, before freezing, the bottom layer of the hat must be removed, in lamellar species - the plates, in spongy species - the spongy part.

To put the fungi more compactly in the freezer, it is recommended to cut them into small pieces. The smallest ones can be frozen whole. In winter, they are suitable for decorating the appearance of dishes.

For freezing, the sliced ​​mushrooms are scattered on a tray in a thin layer and turn on the freezer at the maximum temperature. After twelve hours, any fungi will be frozen. After that, they are poured into a bag and placed in the freezer, switched to normal mode.

Boiled

Before the mushrooms are frozen, they are boiled (at a certain time for each species). After cooking, they are thrown back onto the wire rack until the water drains. Allow to stand for at least one hour. You can even press them down a little to drain the water. After the mushrooms have dried, they are put in a strong plastic bag and sent to the freezer.

Attention! Mushrooms should not be re-frozen - they will make a tasteless watery mass.

For defrosting, it is better to transfer them to the refrigerator and leave there overnight. If they do not defrost, they can be defrosted again when room temperature.

Defrost them slowly in the refrigerator. There they will gradually move away from freezing, but in addition you still need to know the secrets - how much to cook mushrooms.
There are a couple of other good ways to freeze.

The first way. The mushrooms are washed, cooled, put in plastic bags, sealed and sent to freeze. After defrosting, they are fried with onions and served.

Second way. Take mushrooms, citric acid and salt. The mushrooms are peeled, washed, tossed in moderately salted and acidified boiling water and cooked for about five minutes. After cooling, dry and freeze. Store in plastic bags, from which the air is squeezed out. After cooking, they are eaten immediately, without leaving for later.

  • All edible mushrooms are suitable for freezing, but more than others - strong and not wormy young porcini mushrooms, aspen mushrooms, boletus mushrooms, champignons, chanterelles, honey mushrooms.
  • Mushrooms are a very delicate product and therefore require careful attention and processing as soon as possible. The best thing is to put them in storage the same day they were collected in the forest or bought on the market.
  • How to freeze mushrooms? Freezing principle forest mushrooms is generally similar to freezing berries. Mushrooms must be carefully sorted out, discarding dubious and wormy mushrooms, cut off, remove spoiled parts and rinse thoroughly, changing the water several times. It is best to freeze whole young, strong mushrooms that are rarely wormy. Dry the washed mushrooms on a towel, cut the large ones, then put them on a baking sheet or tray in one layer and place in the freezer. The answer to the question "how to freeze porcini mushrooms" is exactly the same.
  • Put the frozen mushrooms in a bag or container, tie, mark (be sure to write the date of the bookmark and the variety of mushrooms), put in the freezer for storage.
  • Remember that thawed mushrooms are a favorable breeding ground for various microorganisms, therefore, after thawing, the mushrooms should be used immediately for preparing mushroom dishes.
  • Frozen mushrooms are stored in a freezer at -18 ° C for up to one year.

Can mushrooms be frozen fresh?

If you are afraid of freezing fresh mushrooms, boil them in boiling salted water for 5 minutes before freezing them, discard them in a colander, dry them, and only then freeze them.

Sign containers and bags with frozen mushrooms - when cooked, they look like a homogeneous mass. Fill containers whole. The less air is left in the container, the better the food will remain in it. The same rule applies to plastic bags: squeeze the air out of them to the maximum, tie them, then put them in the freezer. Now you know everything about how to properly freeze mushrooms!

Practice shows that even the most avid mushroom pickers do not always know what kind of treatment porcini mushrooms, aspen and boletus mushrooms require. Not only do many have no idea how much to cook porcini mushrooms and such mushrooms similar to them, some deliberately refuse this approach. In fact, only preliminary heat treatment is able to prepare the components for subsequent use properly.

In the case of porcini mushrooms, cooking will last about 35-40 minutes; boletus boletus will reach the desired state in 20 minutes; boletus boletus are boiled for 40-50 minutes. It should be remembered, however, that dried and fresh foods are not processed in the same way.

Important facts about porcini mushrooms

Before boiling porcini mushrooms, you should learn how to handle them properly. First of all, you need to understand how to distinguish a product among all the variety of its close and distant relatives. People often mistake boletus and boletus mushrooms for porcini mushrooms, which leads to a violation of the rules for their processing. Real porcini mushrooms have a velvety cap that ranges in color from yellow to dark brown or reddish brown. The leg of a very light brown shade expands downward and is covered with a white mesh.

White pores can be found under the cap of young mushrooms; in mature foods they are yellowish or greenish. A slice of porcini mushrooms always remains white, no matter if they are dried, boiled or fresh.

Tip: Few people know that porcini mushrooms can be dried in the microwave, spending a minimum of time. The workpieces are simply placed on the dish and processed at the lowest power for 20 minutes. Then the microwave is ventilated and another 2-3 approaches are done.

Front heat treatment the product must be cleaned.

It consists of several stages:

  1. The product must be put into cold water and kept in it for at least an hour.
  2. After that, you will have to process each product separately, removing it from the liquid, cutting off all suspicious and dark areas. It is recommended to remove the entire skin from the legs of the age components, until the white pulp.
  3. We cut each element into at least 4 parts to assess its internal purity. White, boletus and boletus mushrooms very often turn out to be wormy, so you should check them as carefully as possible.
  4. Put the processed ingredients in a bowl or colander. They cannot be left for a long time, it is better to immediately proceed with subsequent processing.

The above manipulations must be carried out not only before boiling the mushrooms for their subsequent cooking, but also by freezing, canning, and drying the components.

Boiling porcini mushrooms in a slow cooker and a double boiler

Properly prepared products at home can be processed by the most different ways... The most popular and convenient are the following:

  • In a saucepan. Put the cleaned product in a container of a suitable size, fill it with water so that the liquid covers all the elements. You must immediately add a little salt and stir everything well. On high heat, we wait for the water to boil, during which you need to remove the foam, it can be abundant. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to cook the mass for at least 35-40 minutes, regularly skimming off the foam. Before removing food from the stove, make sure that the formation of foam has stopped. We put the blanks in a colander and use them for their intended purpose.

  • In a multicooker. Put the processed product in a multicooker bowl, pour cold water, completely covering the products, add some salt. You should not try to boil all the mushrooms at once, their volume should not exceed half a bowl. Processing is carried out for 40 minutes in the "Baking" mode. Dried products may require a longer exposure - up to an hour.

  • In a double boiler. In this way, it is recommended to boil only fresh mushrooms, the dried components will lack moisture and may turn out to be too dense. We just put the blanks in a bowl with holes, add some salt. We close the structure with a lid, set the timer for 40-50 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces.

The product brought to readiness must be thrown into a colander, getting rid of excess liquid. After that, without wasting time, you should freeze it or use it in dishes.

How and how much do you need to cook porcini mushrooms, before frying and marinating?

Very often, housewives ask themselves how to properly boil porcini mushrooms, if further thermal or chemical processing is planned. The following rules apply here:

  1. Before frying, the ingredients must be boiled in salted boiling water for at least 20 minutes. Better yet, bring them to a state of full readiness. If, after such a preparatory stage, the product is also fried for at least a quarter of an hour, the risk of poisoning will decrease to zero.
  2. Before pickling, the peeled and chopped mass should be boiled in boiling water with bay leaves for half an hour. After which the broth is decanted, the mushrooms are laid out in a colander. All the necessary spices are added to the liquid, the blanks are returned and boiled for another 10 minutes.
  3. Particular attention should be paid to how the dried mushrooms... First, they are soaked for 2-3 hours in a large volume of cold salted water. Then it is boiled in it for 30-40 minutes, depending on whether the dried components were cut or not.

Boiled porcini mushrooms are rarely used on salads or other snacks, but they make excellent soups, sauces and baking fillings. You just need to learn how to properly combine them with spices and additional components.

When and how should boletuses be cooked?

Aspen mushrooms, like porcini mushrooms, should be boiled for any use other than drying. And before freezing, they must not only be brought to readiness, but also before that they must be kept in a weak solution for several minutes. citric acid to prevent the component from turning blue.

Boletus boiled as follows:

  • We clean the mushrooms soaked for an hour, remove the film from the cap, cut.
  • We put the products in a saucepan, fill with cold water, add salt and bring the mass to a boil. Boletus is boiled for no more than 20 minutes after boiling, while the foam is regularly removed from the surface of the broth.
  • We put the finished product in a colander and use it as directed after the excess liquid drains.

Before cooking, the dried components must be soaked in cold salted water, spending at least 2-3 hours on this. It is recommended to process fresh aspen mushrooms as early as possible, no later than 2-3 days after collection.

What is the best way to cook boletus mushrooms?

Despite the fact that aspen mushrooms and boletus mushrooms are quite similar and are often confused, the principles of boiling the components differ significantly.

  • Before cooking, soak dried products for 2 hours. Fresh - soak for 1 hour, peel, chop at random. Fill the blanks with water and salt (a tablespoon of salt per 1 kg of product).
  • Turn on medium heat and bring the mixture to a boil. After that, immediately drain the water and change it to fresh. This time, the product must be cooked for at least 40-50 minutes, depending on the size of the pieces. It doesn't matter if they are fresh or dried. Be sure to remove the foam as it appears.
  • The finished mushrooms will sink to the bottom, then they can be put in a colander or removed from the boiling water using a slotted spoon. Immediately after that, you need to proceed with further processing of the products or start freezing them.

Porcini mushrooms, aspen mushrooms and boletus mushrooms can also be boiled in a slow cooker. In this case, the "Baking" mode is used. For the first component, the processing time is 30 minutes, for the second - 20 minutes, for the third - from half an hour to 50 minutes.

Foreword

When making stocks, you need to know how to freeze mushrooms for the winter, how to store them in this state and how to defrost them correctly, so that they can then be used for cooking.

Which mushrooms can be frozen raw?

It is known that according to their structure, mushrooms are divided into marsupials, tubular and lamellar. The first group is the smallest, and it includes the rarest mushrooms - truffles, along with morels. But the other two groups are very rich in their constituent species. The difference between them is in the structure of the bottom side of the cap, where the spore chambers are located. In tubular, they, respectively, have the appearance of a porous surface, which is why such mushrooms are also called spongy.

In the lamellar, the lower part of the cap is folded, of many thin plates, between which there are spores. Why do we need these classifications? It's simple - only spongy mushrooms, for example, porcini, can be frozen raw. The fact is that the porous surface of the cap, which is the main edible part, absorbs water well during cooking and gives it away poorly. Therefore, if you first dip the boletus or boletus into boiling water, as well as porcini mushrooms, then they will have to be squeezed out so that they do not become watery, and this will not affect the quality of the product in the best way.

But the lamellar species should be just boiled, and honey mushrooms should be boiled for at least half an hour, otherwise you will experience an upset stomach after defrosting and preparing a hot dish from them. Other mushrooms also need to be cooked for at least 10 minutes. All types of marsupial mushrooms must be boiled before freezing, and then squeezed out, and then rinsed in running water to get rid of harmful Helvelic acid.

Mushroom preparation rules

Having collected mushrooms in the forest, without delaying, sort them out and discard the wormy ones, as well as those previously unnoticed, spoiled, since they are in any case unfit for consumption, and you should not freeze them. Next, you need to choose the youngest, oldest and most sluggish for fresh storage, unsuitable, it is better to cook and fry them right away. All mushrooms you select should be firm and firm to the touch.

In no case do not go over a large collection, if there are a lot of gifts of nature, immediately put most of them in the refrigerator and work with small portions - cut mushrooms quickly lose their freshness. If everything does not fit in the refrigerator, put it briefly in a cool cellar. Those types of mushrooms that are undesirable to cook before freezing (tubular) should be rinsed in running water and cleaned of dirt and debris.

But try to exclude long contact with moisture, otherwise it will be quickly absorbed by the spongy surface, due to which, after defrosting, the product will be watery. Small mushrooms can be frozen whole, but large ones are best cut into slices, which, however, should not be too thin. Those mushrooms that are pre-boiled should become soft enough, but if the legs are still too hard, it is better to cut them off and prepare a broth from them.

Freezing methods, as well as defrosting secrets

Let's start by harvesting fresh forest products (or buying from the market). To begin with, as already mentioned, the mushrooms need to be cleaned of debris and rinsed, but not kept in water for long. We put our blanks in the freezer (small white ones can be whole, others are better in sliced ​​form) without a bag or container, but simply spread out in an even layer along the bottom, they can be on a small pallet or dish.

And only after an hour and a half, when the porous surface of the cap hardens, you need to transfer everything to a container or a plastic bag, it is advisable to squeeze air out of the latter before closing.

Those mushrooms that you previously boiled are removed first in a colander or on a sieve so that water is completely drained from them. By the way, heat treatment of tubular species is also allowed, in particular - porcini mushrooms, but from them, as mentioned earlier, you need to slightly squeeze out moisture. And if after the honey agarics the broth is drained, then the broth after the whites can be used for soup - it contains all the useful substances characteristic of boletus. No need for boiling. When the workpieces have cooled down, carefully put them into containers or bags and send them to the freezer. And finally, the most interesting thing. If the first 2 methods provided for the preparation of practically semi-finished products, then now we will move on to an almost finished product (which, however, still requires bringing to full readiness). So, put slightly boiled mushrooms in a frying pan with a preheated vegetable oil and lightly fry until slightly firm. In the process, they may brown or darken slightly - this is quite normal for ours, especially if they are white. Next, cool and transfer to containers. You can pre-hold it in a colander to glass the oil, especially if you fried in olive, as it freezes in flakes in the refrigerator.

As for the defrosting of mushrooms, it should proceed in the same way for any method of preparation by cooling. First of all, remember that in no case should you defrost quickly, otherwise the mushrooms will become soft and watery. Transfer the container (if you want to use the whole serving) or part of its contents from freezer to any other compartment of the refrigerator where a higher temperature is maintained. It is advisable to keep the workpiece there for about 8-10 hours (for example, at night) and then defrost it for another hour at room temperature. In no case should the mushrooms be frozen a second time, therefore, if you are not going to use the entire portion, take exactly the right amount.