How to clean a porcini mushroom before cooking (with photo)

Usually, future housewives receive knowledge about how to clean porcini mushrooms from their grandmothers and mothers. And far from always the information is correct and reliable. Therefore, we suggest learning how to clean porcini mushrooms in accordance with the canons of culinary technology. This information will allow you to get the right idea about how to clean the porcini mushroom at home so that there is as little waste as possible and as much raw material suitable for processing. The first thing to remember is that the processing of mushrooms should begin immediately after their collection in the forest. Before you clean fresh white mushrooms, prepare a few basins. Type warm water into one of them. Another is to adapt for cutting mushrooms. The third is needed for garbage.

How to peel a cep

Fresh mushrooms are not stored for long, therefore, they must be processed for 3-4 hours after harvesting - sorted and prepared for canning or used for cooking mushroom dishes. If it is not possible to process the mushrooms immediately, transfer them to enameled dishes without a lid and store in the refrigerator for 1-2 days. At the same time, they should be shaken and transferred as little as possible and handled carefully so as not to leave dark spots and dents. Preparing mushrooms for culinary processing consists in cleansing of debris (adhering blades of grass and insects), removing darkened or damaged places.

Before cleaning the cap of the white mushroom, it is cleaned with a knife with a stainless steel blade or a soft cloth. The cut on the legs is updated, removing the most contaminated part. If mushrooms from the forest are heavily contaminated, they are soaked in water and crushed with a load for complete immersion. After 10–20 min, the hats are easily washed off from adhering grass and leaves. Do not leave the mushrooms in the water for a long time, as they will actively absorb it, which will negatively affect their taste and aroma, make the caps brittle. Then the mushrooms are washed with clean running water. Particular attention is paid to washing the bottom surface of the mushroom caps, which is spongy or lamellar, and therefore most susceptible to contamination. Then the mushrooms are left in a colander or sieve to drain the liquid. The exception is mushrooms intended for drying and, sometimes, freezing. They are only cleaned, but not washed with water, and even less soaked.

See how to clean the white mushroom in the photo, where the whole process is shown step by step.

How to clean porcini mushroom

You can read more about how to clean porcini mushroom for one or another culinary processing further on this page. Mushrooms are dried in their natural form, and for freezing, cut into thin slices or slices, depending on size. The first and most important requirement when processing mushrooms is a thorough look, as they can be very dirty and clogged with sand.Mushrooms should be processed only young, quite healthy, not wormy, with cut roots, without any debris, needles, leaves, earth, and only freshly picked.

An important step is sorting and cleaning. For pickling in a hermetically sealed container, only a mushroom cap is taken.

Porcini mushrooms intended for preservation in a hermetically sealed container are also sorted by color or by place of growth: spruce, pine, oak, birch boletus. In accordance with the distribution of varieties, the leg is also cut. The peel from the remaining stump at the hat is scraped off with a knife. In addition, mushrooms are thoroughly cleaned of adhering debris, needles, twigs, particles of earth, and all wormy specimens are discarded. Wormholes are cut from less worms. The mushrooms intended for drying are finally cleaned with a wet cloth, and the rest are washed.

How to peel porcini mushrooms before freezing

Washing is the most important preparatory process. The quality of the finished product depends on its thoroughness. Therefore, special attention should be paid to washing, considering at the same time that aromatic and soluble dry substances are lost during prolonged washing. Therefore, the washing time must be limited.

You can wash mushrooms well without loss for 10 minutes, while changing the water several times. It is best to wash the mushrooms in running and continuously changing water, especially a pressure jet. Before cleaning porcini mushrooms before freezing, note that if boletus mushrooms are excessively saturated with water, this indicates that they are overgrown or damaged. In the process of decay, substances harmful to health can be formed, for example, nerin poison, as a result of which edible fungi can become poisonous. Mushrooms cannot be pulled out of the ground, because the structure of the mycelium is disturbed, after which the filament of the fungal mycelium dies and does not bear fruit. Mushrooms must be carefully cut with a knife.

After cutting the mushroom, check if it is wormy. In addition, by cutting off the mushrooms with a knife, we reduce the possibility of their contamination by adhering to the ground. The collected mushrooms are immediately cleaned of the earth, leaves, needles, grass and other debris adhering to them; remove parts affected by insect larvae. Heavily soiled lower parts of the legs are cut off. Putting the mushrooms in the basket more correctly with the caps down - this way they are better preserved.

Mushrooms contain not only particles of soil.

They may also contain insect larvae. To remove them, it is necessary to soak the mushrooms for 2 minutes in a one percent salt solution - 10 g of salt per 1 liter of water. Soaking will also help partially clear the mushrooms of soil, needles, particles of manure and peat, which may contain parasites and microbes. And only after soaking the mushrooms are placed in a colander and washed under running cold water for several minutes.

See how to clean porcini mushrooms before cooking in the photo showing the subtleties of this process.

Peeling porcini mushrooms before drying.

One of the simplest methods for processing mushrooms is drying. For drying, porcini mushrooms (mushrooms) are most suitable. Mushrooms are carefully inspected, cleaned with a knife from moss, leaves, needles and other forest debris. Discard randomly collected inedible and worms, cut out the damaged parts, separate the caps from the legs, if the skin is easily separated from the pulp, it is removed. Wipe the mushrooms with a dry or damp cloth. Do not wash. After that, thick legs are cut across into circles up to 3 centimeters thick, and thin along, into two or four parts.

How to peel porcini mushrooms for freezing

Many people simply wash their mushrooms before freezing under running water. But this is not enough. After a preliminary wash, they must be immersed for 2 minutes in a 1% salt solution, then drained through a colander and rinsed again. So bugs, worms and larvae of parasites, which you may not notice, will detach from the mushrooms. Before cleaning porcini mushrooms for freezing, they can be slightly cooled in the upper chamber of the refrigerator.

Then we cut off all the excess from the mushrooms.Large mushrooms are cut into pieces, and small ones are left intact. Then put the mushrooms in a colander and leave for several hours. Mushrooms should dry. We put the mushrooms in bags or containers. Freeze and store at temperatures from –18 to –23 ° C.

How to peel porcini mushrooms before frying

Many housewives really like frozen fried mushrooms: they have the same taste and aromatic qualities, nutritional and vitamin properties as fresh ones. That is why recently, with the advent of new improved types of refrigerators and freezers, this method of procurement has become very common.

Before frying, you need to know how to clean porcini mushrooms before frying: free from earthen lumps, herbs, in some species, remove the legs, rinse several times in cold water, and after drying, lay them out on a towel, preferably in the open air .

See how to clean porcini mushrooms in a video that illustrates all the technology step by step.