An excellent side dish for meat, fish and vegetable dishes. Find out how to prepare classic caviar from butterfish for the winter, what you need to do to properly prepare butterfish. Check out life hacks and tips from experienced chefs.
How to cook boletus
Butterfly got its name because of the special oily mucus that covers the mushroom cap. Therefore, before preparing caviar, the fungi will need to be cleaned first. First, they are simply cleaned of forest debris by wiping them with a dry cloth. Do not wash butter mushrooms before cleaning; a wet mushroom is very slippery and very difficult to hold in your hands.
Then you will need to remove the film from the cap; this is convenient to do with a small knife. The film is easily removed from small fungi, but with large ones you have to tinker, since the film becomes thinner and breaks quickly.
Advice! The oil film contains substances that color the skin. If you don’t want to scare others with stains on your hands later, clean the oils with gloves.
Peeled mushrooms need to be washed and boiled. Pour the butter into cold water and bring to a boil. Then the water is drained, the fungi are washed and filled with fresh water again. This time the butter is cooked from the moment of boiling for 30 minutes. You need to add salt and a little citric acid to the cooking water. Adding acid will allow the mushrooms to retain their color.
In addition to mushrooms, additional ingredients may be included in the caviar recipe. Usually, vegetables are added - onions, garlic, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini.
To give a brighter taste, spices and seasonings are used - vinegar, mustard, lemon juice. Fragrant herbs complement the taste of caviar well. And to ensure that the snack does not turn out dry, vegetable oil is added to the recipe.
Vegetables are fried or stewed, then mixed with mushrooms. The finished products need to be chopped, you can put them through a meat grinder or use a blender. Choose the degree of grinding to your taste. Some people like smooth, pate-like caviar. And some people prefer the food to be in small pieces.
If caviar is prepared without sterilization, then it is packaged in jars, covered with plastic lids and stored in the refrigerator. You can place the finished product in plastic containers and freeze. If you plan to store the product at room temperature, then you need to sterilize the canned food, pour calcined vegetable oil on top of the mushrooms and close the jars hermetically.
Interesting facts: boletus has a very short shelf life. Mushrooms must be processed within 12 hours after collection, otherwise they will turn black and lose their taste.
Preparing mushrooms for harvesting
Butterflies are versatile mushrooms: they can be fried, canned, frozen, or pickled. But before preparing caviar recipes from boletus, the fruiting bodies need to be properly processed. This must be done immediately after collection. Mushrooms cannot be stored for a long time; they not only lose their beneficial properties, but also lose moisture and shape.
- First of all, the gifts brought from the forest should be sorted out.
- If you notice wormholes or rotten places, then such specimens should be thrown away immediately.
- After this, place the mushrooms in a deep container and fill with cold water.
- Let them soak a little. How long this will take depends on the degree of contamination. On average, this process can take from several minutes to half an hour.
- During this time, the stuck dry twigs and leaves will come off and can be easily removed.
- Rinse the oils in clean water.
After this, you can start cleaning them. Cut off part of the stem from the bottom of each fruit. Then remove the brown film from the cap. Important! Remember that boletus must be cleaned with gloves. Otherwise, a brown coating will remain on your hands, which is quite difficult to remove. - After you have finished cleaning the oilers, you need to thoroughly rinse the fruits again. Even if you carefully sorted them out, this does not guarantee that there are no wormy mushrooms left at all. Therefore, put the butter in a basin, add a little salt and fill with water.
- Leave them in this state for at least three hours. During this time, all insects and dirt will float to the surface, and the larvae, on the contrary, will settle to the bottom. All that remains is to rinse the fruiting bodies in running water. There is no need to soak boletus for several days, as is done with other mushrooms.
After these simple manipulations, you can further prepare the mushrooms: pickle, boil, stew, bake, fried. The process of sterilizing jars should not be ignored. This can be done in the microwave, oven, or even a slow cooker.
A simple recipe for winter boletus caviar with onions
To begin with, here is a simple caviar recipe that uses a minimum of ingredients.
- 1 kg of processed butter;
- 120 ml refined vegetable oil;
- 2 onions;
- salt, black pepper to taste.
Peel the mushrooms, rinse and boil until tender. When cooking, add salt and a pinch of citric acid to the water. Drain the boiled mushrooms through a colander and leave to cool.
Butter caviar with garlic
If you like spicy snacks, you can prepare caviar from butter and garlic.
- 1 kg of peeled butter;
- 2 onions;
- 1 head of garlic;
- 150 gr. refined vegetable oil;
- 3 peas each of black and allspice;
- 2 bay leaves;
- salt, pepper, sugar to taste.
We clean, rinse and boil fresh butter. Place the cooked mushrooms in a colander and cool slightly so that they do not burn on your fingers. Then we pass the mushrooms through a meat grinder or blender.
Chop the onion very finely and fry it in vegetable oil until tender. Then add the twisted butter, mix and simmer over low heat for 40 minutes.
Peel the garlic, pass it through a press and add it to the caviar, stir well. Add salt, pepper, and if desired, you can add a little sugar. Simmer everything together for another 10 minutes. Then put it in pre-sterilized jars. First place washed and dried bay leaves and peppercorns at the bottom of the jars. Cover with regular plastic lids. This caviar should be stored in the refrigerator for no more than 6 months.
Storage rules
To ensure that the finished product retains its freshness for as long as possible, there are several simple secrets. The most important point is the room temperature - it should not be more than 6-7 degrees. The room should not be exposed to direct sunlight. Also, the jar should be tightly sealed or rolled under a lid to prevent air from entering it, which can lead to the development of pathogenic organisms.
Important! If caviar was prepared for the winter without sterilization, then it is better to store the jars with it in the refrigerator to avoid unexpected changes in room temperature.
Storing the product at room temperature is allowed only with long-term sterilization and adding vegetable oil to each jar. Mushroom caviar can also be stored in the freezer. For this method, it is best to use plastic containers or packaging bags.
Recipe with carrots and onions
This version of fresh boletus caviar is prepared with carrots and onions.
- 2 kg of peeled butter;
- 1 large carrot;
- 1 large onion;
- 500 ml vegetable oil;
- 5 peas of allspice;
- salt, ground black pepper to taste;
- 2-3 bay leaves.
We clean the boletus, rinse it in cold water and boil it with salt until tender. Drain the mushroom broth and cool the mushrooms.
While the butter is cooling, peel the carrots and onions. Three carrots on a grater with medium holes, and chop the onion into small cubes. Fry vegetables in vegetable oil. First, put the onion in the oil, after about five minutes add the carrots and continue to fry everything together until the vegetables are completely cooked.
Grind the mushrooms using a meat grinder or blender. Place the chopped boletus in a frying pan with the prepared onions and carrots, mix well, add salt and pepper. Reduce heat and simmer everything together for 30 minutes.
We sterilize the jars in advance. Place washed and well-dried bay leaves and peppercorns on the bottom. Place the hot caviar into the tanks and cover with plastic lids. Cool to room temperature, then put in the refrigerator. It is not recommended to store such canned food for more than six months.
Selection and preparation of ingredients
Preparing butter for cooking is a slightly lengthy and labor-intensive process. To make caviar, you can use any substandard boletus (parts of the mushroom, deformed, very large or very small) left over from other types of preparation or preparation; this will not affect the deterioration of the result or taste. To pre-clean mushrooms, it is better to wear gloves, since your fingers will definitely turn black during this process, and it will be quite difficult to wash them.
The first step is to thoroughly clean the stem of the mushroom: cut off the remaining mycelium and thoroughly scrape the stem itself until white. Then you must definitely remove the top film from the caps. Sometimes on young boletus there is a white film under the cap, which also needs to be removed. Cleaned mushrooms should be placed in a container with plenty of water and rinsed well. Next, place them in boiling water and stir gently several times.
The purpose of this procedure is to get rid of sand stuck in the pores of the oil. To be completely sure of the result, the action can be repeated. After this, the mushrooms should be poured with clean boiling water and boiled for 20 minutes. The base for mushroom caviar is ready. Sterilize jars with a capacity of 0.5–0.7 liters for canning in any convenient way (steamed, oven or microwave).
Caviar from boletus and moss mushrooms with tomatoes
Caviar is prepared only from boletus or from a mixture of boletus and moss mushrooms. These mushrooms are very similar in appearance, but moss mushrooms do not have an oily film on the cap, so they are easier to clean.
- 1 kg of mushrooms, the ratio of moss mushrooms and butterflies can be any. You can prepare this caviar only from boletus or only from moss mushrooms;
- 2 onions;
- 2 carrots;
- 2 tomatoes;
- 300 ml refined vegetable oil;
- salt, black pepper, dry basil and oregano to taste.
We clean the mushrooms, rinse and boil them. Drain the finished mushrooms through a colander and let them cool slightly. Then we grind them in any convenient way. You can use a meat grinder or blender. You can just chop it with a knife, but it will take longer.
Secrets and life hacks from chefs
To make all boletus dishes tasty, you need to know some tricks that only experienced chefs or lovers of quiet hunting know:
- Never wash mushrooms before cleaning, this rule especially applies to butter mushrooms. They will absorb all the water, become even stickier, and then it will become much more difficult to clean them. First, remove the skin from the cap, scrape the bottom part and only then rinse.
- To determine whether the mushrooms are cooked or not, you need to look into the pan. Cooked boletus will float on the surface, float to the surface, but uncooked butter will remain in the water.
- The methods for preparing caviar from boletus are slightly different. You can fry the vegetables separately, the butter separately, and then combine everything together. This snack will be more filling.
- If you add boiled mushrooms to fried vegetables and simmer for a certain time, this dish will be more dietary.
- To properly preserve mushroom caviar for the winter, you need to fulfill several conditions: carefully process the jars before canning, fill them only with hot product, carefully observe the time of the last stage (sterilization). You can pour 1 tablespoon of vinegar into each jar of caviar (to be sure), if its presence is not specified in the recipe.
- Store preserved mushrooms in cool rooms for no longer than six months.
Whatever recipe you choose for making boletus caviar, it will certainly turn out delicious. All these methods are the best, tested by experience.
Preparation with soy sauce and walnuts
This caviar has a spicy taste and is prepared with the addition of soy sauce and nuts.
- 1 kg butter;
- 1 large onion;
- 1 carrot;
- 3 cloves of garlic;
- 300 ml vegetable oil;
- 100 gr. walnut kernels;
- soy sauce and ground black pepper - to taste.
Peel, rinse and boil the butter until cooked. Let them cool, draining the broth. We chop the carrots and onions, it is more convenient to grate the carrots, and we simply chop the onions finely.
Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and first fry the onion until golden brown. Then remove the onion with a slotted spoon, trying to leave as much oil in the pan as possible. Then fry the carrots in the same oil. Mix the fried onions and carrots, add the mushrooms minced through a meat grinder and simmer everything together for 30 minutes.
Lightly dry the nut kernels in a dry frying pan and grind them into coarse grains. Add nuts to the caviar, season with soy sauce and pepper. Simmer for another 5 minutes and turn off the heat.
