How and how long to store salted mushrooms at home

Pickling mushrooms is a common and reliable way to preserve the harvest. Homemade preparations are not only tasty, but also convenient to use. You can prepare many different dishes with salted mushrooms. In this article we will talk about how to properly store salted mushrooms.

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How are salted mushrooms stored?

Undoubtedly, an important question is: where to store the prepared crop? But an important question is: in what way is it better to do this and in what areas is it not recommended to do it for a long time?

When storing, it is recommended to place them in wooden or glass containers. Wooden tubs and barrels, enamel buckets or jars are perfect for this.
Plastic dishes will be a poor long-term storage option. It can be used for several days to preserve the salted harvest in the refrigerator.

Preliminary preparation for salting

All mushrooms love cleanliness, so before you pickle them at home, you need to thoroughly clean them:

The collected mushrooms must be washed in several waters.
Remove all foreign objects, paying special attention to the spaces between the plates in the cap. Insects can often hide there.
Clean the outer surface of the mushrooms using a knife or a new foam sponge for washing dishes.
Remove all rotten parts. Experts advise cutting off the legs as well, storing only the caps of the milk mushrooms.
If necessary, especially large caps can be carefully cut into segments convenient for storage in jars.

Prepared mushrooms are poured with cold salted and acidified (2 g of citric acid, 10 g of salt per 1 liter) water for 2 days. Long soaking helps get rid of bitterness and toxic juice. Before starting harvesting, it is good to change the water several times.

How to store salted mushrooms and how long

It is necessary to store salted mushrooms correctly after pickling. For this there must be appropriate conditions. Not only storage containers are important, but also air humidity and room temperature.

The main thing is that the place is dark, cool and dry. When following the technology, it is also important to remember the storage time, and it can vary. How to properly preserve salted mushrooms at home?

With or without sealing in glass jars

Storing salted mushrooms in glass jars is allowed for up to 12 months.
Without sealing in a glass container covered with a nylon lid: from six months to a year.
How long can you store rolled mushrooms? Their shelf life will be shorter. It will range from six months to 8 months.

In the refrigerator and freezer

An excellent place to store salted mushrooms in jars for the winter is the refrigerator. Some housewives, if there is free space, leave the preparations in the freezer. However, plastic bags are used for this - it’s more convenient. After salting, all the liquid is drained and the raw materials are dried. Then they are put into bags and stored for up to two years. How long do salted mushrooms last in the refrigerator?

As a rule, if all conditions are met in a closed container, up to 8 months.

Without brine

Another convenient way to qualitatively preserve a representative of the forest kingdom is to store it without brine. When it is salted, it must stand for a week in the cold. Then the brine is removed from it and oil is added instead. It must be left for a long time in a cold, dry and dark room. The risk of mold damage is significantly reduced, and the oil serves as a natural preservative. Such winter reserves can be eaten for 6 months.

An unusual storage option without brine

Some housewives prefer to store salted mushrooms without brine. It was noticed that fat and oily film do not leave mold any chance. Mushrooms prepared using this option will never become moldy.

The essence of the method is as follows:

Mushrooms are salted in the usual, familiar way.
A mandatory step is to keep the pickled mushrooms (in brine) in the refrigerator for at least 1 week.
After 7 days, all the liquid is drained, and vegetable oil is poured into the container instead.
To consume, you just need to drain the oil and enjoy the excellent taste of mushrooms.

For storage, choose a dry, cool and always dark place. Under the influence of light, the process of fat breakdown occurs, and this negatively affects the taste, rancid notes appear.

Many people are interested in collecting and preparing mushrooms. White milk mushroom is the best catch for mushroom pickers. However, not everyone knows how to store salted milk mushrooms. These mushrooms have long been popular in Russian cuisine. They are used both as an independent snack and as an additive to other dishes.

Milk mushrooms belong to the category of conditionally edible mushrooms, like all lamellar mushrooms. The reason is that they secrete toxic juice, which gives them their characteristic bitter taste. Therefore, it is very important to know exactly how to properly pickle and how to store milk mushrooms. This will help protect yourself and your loved ones from food poisoning and botulism.

Tips for storing salted mushrooms

The basic rule for storing pickles is to sterilize containers. If the rule is neglected, other conditions will no longer be important. Sterilize a ceramic or glass container, and pour boiling water over barrels, tubs and buckets and let them dry.

Storage temperature

Optimal temperature for storage: + 6 degrees, regardless of the harvesting method.

Sterilized pickles are recommended at a temperature of 0 to 15 degrees and a relative humidity of 75 percent.

How does room temperature affect salted crops? It is not advisable to leave the product on it for a long time. It can last only a few days, and then deteriorate without you even noticing. So it's better not to risk your health.

After opening the can

Just like at room temperature, storing opened cans for a long time and then consuming them is a health risk. Their shelf life is rapidly decreasing. How long do salted mushrooms last after opening?

After uncorking the jars, they are placed in the cold and left for no more than 2 days. Gauze folded in several layers will help extend the shelf life of an opened product. It is soaked in vodka and placed on top of the product. Next, for consumption, wash with water.

Consequences of improper storage

If the basic rules of preparation and storage are not followed, pickles pose a risk of contracting foodborne diseases. These can be diseases of varying severity - from uncomplicated poisoning to botulism. But it is the latter that most often can be infected by eating mushroom preparations.

The causative agent of the disease is a spore that is quite resistant to environmental conditions. It most often gets on fruits at the place of their collection, from water or soil. This is one of the reasons why mushrooms are cut off, leaving the lower part.

The consequences of infection can be severe. Food poisoning, if we are not talking about mushroom poison, but about improper processing, makes itself felt in the period from 3 hours to 3 days after consumption. The symptoms in this case are clearly manifested: nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fever. If qualified assistance is not provided on time, this can lead to death.

Clinical signs of botulism are often less pronounced. The first symptoms of the disease appear on average after 18-24 hours, sometimes it takes up to 5 days. The disease begins in the same way as ordinary poisoning, but subsequently severe constipation occurs (a sign of intestinal paresis). Visual disturbances and other neurological symptoms then appear.

This is a very serious disease that requires immediate medical intervention. Otherwise, death is possible.

Botulinum toxin can only survive under anaerobic conditions, that is, in an environment without air. Namely, it is ideal for preserving the properties of pickles. At the same time, other pathogenic bacteria thrive in conditions with oxygen. Therefore, your task is to ensure maximum processing of raw materials and finished pickles.

Caution : Pay attention to pickles before eating. If the liquid becomes cloudy or gas is released (a bloated lid or an unpleasant odor from the barrel), then the product must be disposed of.

Where to store mushrooms after pickling

A basement, refrigerator and glassed-in balcony are an excellent place to store items for future use. A cellar would work well too. The main thing is to observe the temperature regime and other environmental indicators. If you live in an apartment, then the most reliable way to store salted forest harvest is in the refrigerator.

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Food and dishes Shelf life of pickled mushrooms at home - in the refrigerator or without, in the apartment and cellar

Types of salting

In addition to storage methods, there are also several types of mushroom pickling: cold and hot.
Cold pickling occurs by soaking mushrooms in brine for several days. Hot salting involves boiling the product in brine. Lamellar mushrooms are mainly suitable for pickling: milk mushrooms, russula, honey mushrooms, honey mushrooms, etc. After a “quiet hunt,” the mushrooms need to be cleaned of dirt and washed thoroughly under warm water. And some types require soaking to get rid of bitterness. This is done within 3 days, for large specimens - up to 5 days.

Salted saffron milk caps

Ingredients:

500 grams of saffron milk caps;
20 grams of salt;
currant leaves 10 grams;
bay leaf;
allspice;
5 grams of ground red pepper.

Preparation

Place the peeled saffron milk caps on a sieve or colander. Scald them several times with boiling water and immediately after that pour water into which ice cubes were previously thrown. Then place the product on a paper towel and let it dry.
Place bay leaf and pepper mixed with currant leaves at the bottom of a glass jar. Distribute the saffron milk caps evenly, sprinkling each layer with salt and pepper.
Cover with a cotton cloth soaked in vodka, place a wooden or plastic circle, and place a mug filled with water on it.
The product will be ready after 35 days of salting.

Salted champignons

For those who don’t like picking mushrooms or are simply worried that they might end up with inedible specimens (but they still want to eat mushrooms), a trip to the nearest vegetable store is required, where you can buy champignons and prepare such an appetizer.

You will need:

3 kg of champignons;
350 g onions;
200 g hot chili pepper;
200 g salt;
vegetable oil;
spices to taste.

How to freeze fresh champignons in your home refrigerator

Preparation:

Remove the top layer from each champignon cap, rinse thoroughly and wait until the water drains. Place them in a bowl and sprinkle with salt, mix everything thoroughly.
Peel the onions and chili peppers and cut into rings.
Place the ingredients in sterilized jars in the following order: onion-pepper-champignons. It is imperative that the final layer be champignons.
Fill the workpiece with oil. If desired, add spices to taste and seal the jar.
All you have to do is marinate the appetizer for a week, and you’re ready to eat.

How our mushrooms became covered with mold

We cooked the mushrooms (volnushki and black milk mushrooms), washed them, and left them to drain. Then they placed the mushrooms in an enamel bucket in layers, sprinkling with salt at the rate of 1 tablespoon per 1 liter of boiled mushrooms. This is the dosage of our woman Tanya. I can assume that in our case more salt could have been added (as recommended in the source above). The autumn turned out to be warm and sometimes it was too warm on the balcony, and in such conditions the authors of the articles advise increasing the proportions of salt.

They covered the whole thing with a cloth, put a clean plate upside down and pressed it with a stone.

After a few days, the mushrooms fermented and became moldy, and they smelled unpleasant. My husband and I decided to boil them again. The entire salting procedure was done from the very beginning (it was also recommended in the literature), but nothing helped. Soon the mushrooms turned sour again. So they threw it away because they were afraid to eat it - mushroom poisoning is one of the worst. Why risk your health?

Since then, we have not taken corned beef from the forest and have not salted mushrooms.

Methods for pickling mushrooms

There are a large number of salting methods. Each housewife has her own, proven option. Let's look at the basic methods of harvesting mushrooms for the winter.

Quick salting

The quick pickling method is suitable if you need a snack the next day. Then the varieties that are boiled are suitable: white, aspen, russula or champignons.

Boil them until tender, add salt to taste, use spices, garlic and pour in weak brine. Leave in jars in the refrigerator overnight, and you can eat the dish in the morning.

Hot method

The hot method is quite simple, and therefore many housewives love it. First you need to know exactly the weight of the dry ingredients. The next step is preparing the brine. Take a glass of water, 2 medium heaped spoons of salt, 1 bay leaf, 3 allspice peas and the same number of clove buds. Ideally add a pinch of dill seeds and a few currant leaves.

As soon as the liquid boils, place the mushrooms in it.

Important! After 5 minutes, foam will appear that needs to be removed.

As for the cooking time, it may differ for different varieties. Approximately it should be 15-25 minutes.

As soon as the raw material sinks to the bottom, cooking should be stopped and cooled. It would be ideal to transfer the products into a wide bowl.

Transfer the cooled mushrooms into clean and sterilized jars so that they occupy 80% of the total volume, compact well. Top up with the brine that remained after cooking and roll up. It is better to store such preparations in a cool place.

Cold way

Cold salting is a cooking method that does not involve heat treatment of products. You can use special barrels, pans or glass jars as containers.

Spices and currant leaves are placed at the bottom. Some housewives believe that additional aromas only interrupt the real smell and do not use herbs.

Next, raw mushrooms are placed in the container with their caps down. Each ball is sprinkled with ordinary table salt at the rate of 40 grams per 1 kilogram of raw materials, and filled with cold boiled water. When the container is filled to the top, you need to cover it with a cloth and install pressure.

Important! Synthetic fabrics cannot be used.

Refrigerate the pickles, and within a few weeks you will be able to enjoy the finished product.

Dry pickling

Place the mushrooms with their caps down, just as in the previous method, sprinkling with salt. After a few hours, when they soften a little, set the pressure.

This recipe differs from the previous one in that everything is marinated in its own juice, without using water or brine. Salting time depends on the variety.

Mushrooms that have been pickled in a barrel are considered the most fragrant. In order to prepare such a delicacy, you need to wash the barrel well, sprinkle the bottom and top layer generously with salt, at the rate of 60 grams of salt per 1 kilogram of raw material. Place the raw materials tightly with the caps down and press down with pressure.

After three days, juice will appear and volumes will decrease. That's when you can add another batch. Repeat the procedure until the barrel is full.

Fill with brine (60 grams of salt per 1 liter of water) and seal. Place the barrel in a cool place, in a cellar or basement.

Without vinegar

The recipe for making it without using vinegar is especially popular.

Prepared mushrooms need to be boiled with the addition of salt and citric acid. It is important to collect the foam that will form during the cooking process. As soon as they go down, the gas can be turned off.

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Place them in clean jars and thoroughly sterilize them in hot water for another hour and a half. After this, carefully seal the jars with lids and turn them upside down until they cool completely.

Pickling frozen mushrooms

There are times when there are no fresh mushrooms, but only frozen ones. Even from such raw materials it is quite easy to make tasty pickles.

For 3 kilograms of freezing, you will need 3 heaped tablespoons of salt, 6 teaspoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of citric acid, bay leaf and cloves.

Place the mushrooms in a saucepan and add only 1.5 cups of water. Turn the heat to low until the liquid from the mushrooms releases gradually. When the liquid covers the grounds, add the remaining ingredients and simmer for another half hour. Let it sit for an hour.

After this, bring it to a boil again and roll it into previously prepared and thoroughly sterilized jars.

Storage in glass containers

Glass jars are found in almost every home, so they are often used for pickling foods. In order for salted mushrooms to be perfectly preserved in a glass container, a number of important conditions must be ensured:

Use only clean dishes; it is advisable to sterilize them additionally.

Be sure to dry the jars thoroughly before adding mushrooms.

If the containers are small in volume, they can be stored in the refrigerator. For example, in the vegetable compartment. With this storage, the mushrooms will be suitable for consumption for up to 6 months.

A significant batch of salted mushrooms is stored in a cellar, basement or other room. In this case, the place where the workpieces will be located must meet the following requirements:

Be dry, well ventilated.

The room temperature should be within +4 +6 °C. Below 0°C, mushrooms freeze, become brittle or crumble, and lose their taste; at temperatures above 6°C, the fermentation process begins, which leads to souring of the product and its spoilage.

There is another place in the apartment that can be used for storing pickled mushrooms. This is a balcony or loggia. In this case, special boxes are prepared for the cans: they are insulated with improvised materials, for example, an old blanket, batting, sawdust.

Salted mushrooms will not spoil in glass containers if they are always covered with brine. That is why it is necessary to periodically check the workpieces, and also ensure the movement of the brine by carefully shaking the containers. The lack of evaporated liquid in the jar should be replenished by adding new prepared brine or simply chilled boiled water.

Following these simple rules and ensuring proper storage conditions will allow you to enjoy delicious mushrooms for 1 year, until the next new harvest.

Important: after opening the jar, mushrooms can only be eaten for 2 days.

The neighbor suggested the reason

And recently we started a conversation with a neighbor in our dacha on the topic of mushrooms. She is an elderly woman, wise with experience. I told her that we don’t salt mushrooms because they turn sour. And Raisa Egorovna told what was the matter.

It turns out that mushrooms intended for pickling cannot be washed after cooking ! And we always wash all mushrooms, regardless of the purpose: be it pickling, salting or freezing.

It is logical to assume that by washing the mushrooms with unboiled water, we introduced bacteria into the pickling, which caused intense fermentation and mold.

The second reason may be a violation of the temperature regime . We placed the enamel bucket with mushrooms on the balcony, where it can be hot at times - the side is eastern, and in the first half of the day the sun warms up well even in autumn.

Thirdly, I can assume that we missed the point when it was necessary to remove mold when it first appeared. The process began and there was no stopping it. Our mushrooms not only became moldy, but also turned sour.

Canned (marinated) mushrooms

I wash the mushrooms several times, put them in a saucepan, add just a little water (mushrooms give up a lot of their liquid during cooking) and put the mushrooms on the fire. I cook until it boils, if I am satisfied with the broth in which the mushrooms were cooked (it is clean, not cloudy, without floating blades of grass), then I leave it and add salt and seasonings. If the broth is in doubt, then I put the mushrooms in a colander and rinse them. Then I put it in the pan again, fill it with water, add salt and seasonings and cook for some more time. It’s difficult to say the exact time - the mushrooms are different and the cooking time is the same. But you need to start from the fact that when the mushrooms sink to the bottom of the pan, they are almost ready and after that you need to boil them for another 10 minutes. 5 minutes before the end of cooking, add vinegar and you can place the mushrooms in sterile jars, top with the marinade in which they were cooked and roll up. Wrap the jars in something warm until they cool completely. Mushrooms are immediately ready to eat, but they also store well all year round. Ready mushrooms are served to the table, adding garlic or onions and watering with vegetable oil. Mushrooms themselves are a tasty product and you don’t need to add a lot of seasonings and other spices.

Now is the time to pick mushrooms. Mushrooms are salted and pickled. Choose mushrooms carefully; immediately discard any mushroom you don’t recognize. And if your quiet hunt was successful, prepare delicious snacks for the winter. I want to bring to your attention a few recipes.

It is important to know!

There are many recipes for mushroom pickling. However, it must be remembered that if the preparation process is incorrect, botulinum toxin may be produced in canned food. It is very important that during cooking all the key points of processing and sterilization of food and utensils are observed. The use of salt and vinegar in pickled mushrooms helps to partially neutralize the activity of these bacteria, and when pickling, only salt acts as a neutralizer.

During harvesting, the mushroom must be cut off just above the base, since there are many bacteria in the ground that are dangerous to humans. Cleaning of the product must occur on the day of collection. This process should not be put off until tomorrow.

When hot pickling, mushrooms must be boiled for up to 40 minutes. The date of manufacture should be written on each closed jar to ensure that the product is not stored longer than expected. It is not advisable to buy mushroom products from unknown people. By following these tips, you don't have to worry about your health.