September is the richest month for mushrooms. At this time, mushroom pickers go into the forest “to hunt”, and then happily prepare mushrooms for the winter. Many people collect porcini mushrooms, honey mushrooms, chanterelles and others, but some also prefer bitter mushrooms (milk mushrooms). Even though they have a pungent taste. Few people know that it is edible, so they have no idea how to salt bitters. Salting is one of the best ways to preserve food. It is very effective and safe if all rules and recommendations are followed. Today we will look at this issue.
Stages and nuances of salting
The entire process of pickling mushrooms can be divided into several stages:
- Preparation of products. At this stage, the mushrooms are sorted.
- Cleaning. This stage is characterized by cleaning the mushrooms from dirt using cold water. Then they are soaked for three days, changing the water periodically. In this case, the dishes must be placed in a cold place. If the mushrooms are very dirty, add salt to the water.
- Slicing. Here the soaked mushrooms are washed and chopped, removing the stems. Large fruits are cut into several parts.
- Salting involves using one of the methods: cold or hot.
Fkusnofacts
— To make the bitters milder in taste
, it is recommended to soak them in cold water for 1-3 days, changing the water every 6 hours. To check if mushrooms are bitter, cook a small amount of them. After cooking, taste will determine whether you should continue soaking. You can boil the bitter mushrooms by boiling them for an hour - however, keep in mind that in this case it will most likely not be possible to completely get rid of the bitterness, and all the taste and beneficial properties will be “boiled” from the mushrooms.
— Bittersweet has a distinctive appearance
- slightly raised margins of the cap (in young mushrooms, the margins first rise and bend inward at the edges), in the center there is an oily pit with a tubercle, the color is red and beige, the cap has plates. The bitterling has no toadstools similar to it, this is a significant plus for beginners in quiet hunting.
— Growing
bitter from May until late frosts in almost any place in the forest, from arid places to swamps and mosses. Bitters grow in groups of 30-50 mushrooms or more. From 1 good clearing you can collect a full basket of bitters.
— Bittersweet belongs to the fourth, “weakest” class of mushrooms
. When boiled or fried, bitters will release their bitterness into the final dish. In some countries, bitter mushrooms are recognized as an inedible mushroom, but in our country, pickling and pickling of bitter mushrooms is recognized without a doubt.
Subtleties of salting
Before salting bitters at home, you need to take forty grams of salt for each kilogram of them. With the cold method, the mushrooms are first blanched; to do this, they are immersed in boiling water for five minutes, then washed with water, cooled and only then salted. With the hot method, the mushrooms are pre-cooked with several changes of water. Glass or enamel containers are used for pickling; you can take wooden barrels or tubs. Store the salted product at a temperature from zero to four degrees Celsius. Before use, it must be washed and soaked.
Salted bitters: a recipe for how to salt at home with photos and videos
Decide for yourself whether to salt the bitters cold or hot. I offer a choice of recipes from my grandmother, a zealous housewife, who prepared amazingly tasty and nutritious dishes from any, even second-rate products.
She cooked champignons most often, but did not disdain bitter mushrooms - conditionally edible mushrooms. I marinated and salted it in different ways. We devoured them with pleasure on both cheeks: with onions and sunflower oil, fried or boiled potatoes. Salty bitters in winter are something.
Hot salting
Before salting bitter mushrooms using the hot method, you need to soak the mushrooms so that all the bitterness goes away. How to do this is indicated above. Soak them for six days, changing the water twice a day to remove the milky juice. After time, the bitters are washed and the stems are cut off. Leaving only two centimeters from the cap, boil for half an hour in salted water, stirring occasionally. This broth is cooled, the mushrooms are placed in a colander to drain the water, then they are transferred to a container and sprinkled with salt. You can add garlic, pepper, cloves and other spices or seasonings. Horseradish and currant leaves are also placed in the container, covered with gauze or a napkin and a weight is placed under which a plate or wooden plank is placed. Now we know how to pickle bitter mushrooms in this way; you just need to store the mushrooms in a room with a temperature no higher than seven degrees Celsius, otherwise they will sour. If the brine does not completely cover the mushrooms, add boiled salted water to them. The mold that forms is removed; to do this, a rag is moistened with vodka and the mushrooms are wiped, the pressure and the plate are washed. You can sprinkle mustard powder on top or pour vegetable oil.
Eating
According to experts, although bitter milk mushrooms have a specific taste, they benefit the body in moderation. It has been experimentally proven that the pulp contains a natural antibiotic that blocks the pathogens of Staphylococcus aureus, as well as Escherichia coli and hay bacilli. But for food consumption, the mushroom is only suitable in pickled or salted form. And to eliminate the unpleasant burning bitterness, the product needs to be soaked properly.
How long to soak
Experienced housewives, who have been preparing winter pickles from bitter mushrooms for many years, advise cutting the mushrooms immediately in the forest to remove leaves and moss, and then carefully place them in a basket with the cap down. At home, the entire crop should be thoroughly washed and inspected for damage. Selected high-quality specimens are poured with cold water for three days.
(provided that further preparation will be carried out using the hot method).
It is important to drain the liquid periodically, as it becomes stretched with hot, milky juice. It is advisable to do this at least 2-3 times
The more often you change the water, the better. After the procedure, the raw materials will no longer be bitter. If you plan to pickle mushrooms using a cold method, soaking should last up to 6 days.
How to pickle
After soaking, the mushrooms need to be washed again, the stems shortened to 2 centimeters and sorted by cap size. In this form, the bitters are boiled over low heat in salted water for about 30 minutes. Don’t forget to stir periodically and skim off any accumulated foam. Then the broth should cool, then the mushrooms can be thrown into a colander to drain excess water. In the meantime, you can start sterilizing the jars. It's best to do this in the oven, making sure to place a dry container inside. Enameled buckets, cans and pans are also suitable for pickling.
After completing all the manipulations, place foliage on the bottom of the prepared container,
In the forests there is often a representative of the mushroom kingdom that looks like a cross between a toadstool, a toadstool and a russula - this is a bitter mushroom. Any mushroom picker can stumble upon it, but many avoid collecting it. The reason is the special taste. In Europe, this mushroom is considered completely inedible. However, bittersweet can be eaten. Where to collect this mushroom, how to cook it, what it looks like - in the material below we will answer all these questions.
Bittersweet (Lactarius rufus) is a lamellar mushroom of the Russula family, belonging to the genus Milky. In Russia, it belongs to category IV of conditionally edible mushrooms, but foreign reference books almost unanimously recognize it as inedible. This mushroom has several common names: it is called bitter milk mushroom, bitter weed, red bitter, bitter bitter. Almost all of them appeared among the people and in the speech of scientists because of the special characteristic taste of the mushroom - pungent and pungent.
Directories give the following description of bitter:
- The cap of young representatives of the species is convex with a pointed tubercle in the center, while in adult mushrooms it is flat with a depressed center - the tubercle is preserved. On a sunny day the surface is dry and smooth to the touch, with a slight fluff; in damp weather it is sticky and glossy. The edge of the cap is turned inward. Its dimensions are relatively small - up to 10 cm in diameter, although some individuals reach 12 cm. The color of the skin is brown-red;
- the leg is smooth, cylindrical, even, usually no more than 8 cm high and up to 1.5 cm thick, with slight pubescence. Mature bitters have a cavity inside the stem. The color is usually much lighter than the skin on the cap - reddish, pinkish, with a hint of rust, but it can also be the same shade as the cap. Young mushrooms often have almost white stems;
- the pulp is almost white or light brown in young bitters and darker in mature ones. It is dense and brittle, has a light woody aroma. When broken, it immediately releases large quantities of milky white juice, which is very bitter and pungent in taste. After cutting, the shade of the juice does not change over time;
- the plates are located very often, narrow, slightly descending along the stalk, of a pale reddish-yellow hue in young individuals, then light brown and brownish in mature ones. In very old bitters they have a white coating;
- spores are whitish, oval in shape.
A simple recipe for pickling mushrooms
Ingredients: five kilograms of bitters, two hundred grams of salt, two cloves of garlic, three hundred grams of dill, three hundred grams of currants, nine grams of horseradish root.
Preparation
Before salting bitter mushrooms (this recipe is very simple), the mushrooms are sorted and cleaned, washed well (especially the caps), then they are soaked using the method suggested above. They are soaked for two days, sometimes you need to change the water. Place the washed bitters with the caps down in a bowl, sprinkle with salt and add all the other ingredients, with the leaves on top. A clean napkin is placed on them and placed under a press. If there is not enough brine, add a four percent salt solution to the mushrooms. Many people know how to pickle bitter mushrooms, but few know how to store them. Store the finished product in a cool place at a temperature of two to seven degrees above zero. You can try the mushrooms within a month and a half after pickling.
Cold salting using method No. 2
Before salting bitter mushrooms, you need to soak the mushrooms much longer than in the first case. All components remain unchanged, this also applies to proportions. It is necessary to soak for three days, change the water three times a day, adding one third of a spoonful of teaspoonful citric acid and one spoonful of table salt. When the water is changed for the last time, nothing is added to it. After time, the mushrooms are washed well and placed in containers in layers, sprinkling each with seasonings and herbs. The container is placed under pressure and put away in a cool place for forty days.
Pickling with vinegar
Before salting bitter mushrooms, the stems of the mushrooms are removed.
Ingredients: one kilogram of mushrooms. Marinade: two onions, two tablespoons of table salt, ten peppercorns, two tablespoons of granulated sugar, three bay leaves, five cloves, one carrot, sixty grams of vinegar.
Preparation
All components for preparing the marinade are placed in a container, half a liter of water is added and boiled for about six minutes. Grate the carrots and finely chop the onion. The mushrooms are washed and boiled in another container for about half an hour. The water is then drained and the marinade is poured over the bitters, onions and carrots are added. Mushrooms should stand for one week. The finished product is served with meat and potato dishes, and is often used as a component for preparing salad. Such mushrooms are often used as an alternative to pickles.
Adviсe
Since bitters are champions in bitterness, they are soaked for five to ten days before salting, constantly changing the water so that the bitterness disappears. After this, it is recommended to boil them. Then they will not have a burning bitterness, but a piquant bitterness. Many people try to collect only large mushrooms, but only small mushrooms, about three centimeters in diameter of the cap, retain their elasticity in the marinade. Therefore, it is recommended to collect only the youngest bitters. If the mushrooms turn out to be large, cut them into pieces, so the bitterness will go away faster. If hot salting is used, they are soaked for no more than two days. An interesting fact is that recently bitters have begun to be dried and washed into powder, which is used as a seasoning for many dishes.
Thus, mushrooms are a favorite product of many people; they are included in various dishes and are also used as an independent delicacy. Mushrooms are not only dried for the winter, but also pickled. They do this in several ways, adding various ingredients, spices and seasonings. Such products are stored only in a cool place. Following all the subtleties and recommendations for preparing bitters will allow you to obtain a safe product, the use of which will not affect human health.
Useful properties of bittersweet
It cannot be said that there are significant benefits from consuming bitters. Because of the tart taste, the mushrooms are soaked in 2 waters, boiled, the composition of nutrients is depleted by about a quarter. But the following positive qualities should still be noted:
- Antiseptic effect. It is so pronounced that even old mushrooms are rarely colonized by parasitic worms.
- Antibacterial activity. The composition contains a substance that destroys a very dangerous microorganism for the child’s body - Staphylococcus aureus. The same component stops the vital activity of E. coli and Proteus.
- Increases the overall immunity of the body, replenishing the reserve of ascorbic acid.
- Stabilizes blood pressure and improves hematopoiesis due to the content of beneficial nutrients.
- Prevents the development of dermatological diseases, improves the quality of the skin when fresh milky juice is applied externally.
- Improves impulse conductivity due to the high magnesium content, normalizes protein-carbohydrate metabolism.
- The antioxidant effect is provided by selenium.
- Reduces blood sugar levels.
- High nutritional properties promote satiety and help avoid weight gain. The calorie content is low, so when you introduce mustard mushroom dishes into your diet, you won’t have to feel hungry.
In hungry years, bittersweet ensured the healthy functioning of the body and prevented the development of dystrophy. The introduction of this fungus into the diet allows children to work normally, maintain the growth and physiological development of children at the desired level, and prevent rickets and stunted height and weight.
