How to dry porcini mushrooms at home

Before drying porcini mushrooms, you need to familiarize yourself with all available methods. You can choose the appropriate method of harvesting boletus while comparing the available capabilities and recommendations of the drying method. This page describes how to dry porcini mushrooms at home using a special dryer or on a baking sheet in the oven. Methods of how to prepare mushrooms for this method of harvesting are presented: wash, chop, decompose. Pay attention to the description of how to dry porcini mushrooms in the dryer, how to prepare raw materials and how to control the temperature. The proposed recipes and expert advice will help you do everything right and get excellent dried mushrooms of a high level of quality. In the meantime, see how to dry porcini mushrooms in the photo, which presents options for slicing raw materials and its layout.

Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter drying

Fresh mushrooms are not subject to long-term storage due to the large percentage of water that they contain. A few days after harvesting, the mushrooms fade, lose their freshness and juiciness and become unfit for consumption. Therefore, mushrooms should be used only after several hours after collection for consumption after suitable heat treatment or their processing into resistant foods, i.e., canned. Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter by drying is used if a mushroom has a large number of mushrooms.

At home, mushrooms are harvested for future use by drying, pickling, salting and canning in hermetically sealed glass jars.

When mushrooms are dried, up to 76% of the available water is removed from them.

The remaining moisture for the development of microorganisms is not enough, which leads to their death.

Drying is the easiest way to harvest mushrooms for the future. Properly dried mushrooms are stored for a long time without losing taste and aroma. And in nutritional value they are inferior to salted and pickled. Before drying, mushrooms should be well cleaned of debris. They can not be washed or moistened with water - this will reduce the quality of the mushrooms, they will lose their aroma and will not dry well. During cleaning, discard, old and wormy mushrooms should be discarded. Many housewives think that during drying the worms will leave the mushrooms, but this is not so. It is best to dry mushrooms on special appliances - sieves, sieves, nets.

The main condition for drying mushrooms is that the air must come from all sides, then the moisture from the mushrooms will come out evenly. It is very important to determine when the mushroom is dried. Properly dried mushroom does not crumble, bends slightly, breaks with effort. An under-dried mushroom bends easily, it feels moist to the touch, and an over-dried mushroom crumbles easily.

Well-dried mushrooms taste and aroma similar to fresh ones. After drying, about 10% of the wet weight remains in the mushrooms.Dried mushrooms should be stored at a temperature of plus 7-10 ° C and low humidity, otherwise they may become moldy. It should be borne in mind that they absorb odors very easily, so they can not be stored next to odorous substances.

If you have a house in the village, and you saved the Russian stove, then this is the best option for harvesting mushrooms in dried form. But you can dry the mushrooms in a gas oven and on top, if you have a special grid for drying. If you dry mushrooms in a Russian oven or oven, observe the following rules: mushrooms prepared for drying are laid out with their hats down on wire racks, or strung on knitting needles like barbecue. The knitting needles should be placed on supports to prevent the mushrooms from touching the surface of the oven or the hearth of the oven.

They should be put to drying when the temperature reaches 60–70 ° С. At a higher temperature, drying is not recommended, as the mushrooms may become too fried and blacken.

At temperatures below 50 ° C they dry very slowly, soured and deteriorate. During drying, it is very important to ensure that moisture evaporating from the mushrooms is removed.

To do this, when closing the oven, the flap should be left ajar, preferably in the upper part, so that the moist air has a free exit. The chimney at the beginning of drying should be ajar by two-thirds of the valve, as the mushrooms dry, it should be gradually covered, close tightly by the end of the drying. In a gas oven, the door should also be left ajar. It is better to dry small and large mushrooms separately, as they are dried unevenly. But if it happened to dry them together, often turn over and separate the already dried mushrooms. Powdered from dried mushrooms. For the manufacture of mushroom powder, you can use the same mushrooms as for drying. The powder can be used to make sauces, soups, caviar, they sprinkle meat and fish dishes during cooking to improve the taste and aroma.

Before use, the mushroom powder is mixed with a small amount of warm water and left for 20-30 minutes to swell, then added to food and boiled for 10-15 minutes. The best powder is obtained from hats, but if you have dried the mushrooms completely, you can sift the powder through a sieve. The remaining coarse powder can be dried and rinsed again. The finer the powder, the better it is. Mushroom powder absorbs moisture very easily and quickly deteriorates. It should be stored in closed glass containers in a dark, dry, cool place. Before drying, the mushrooms are cut into plates, dried, then dried.

Methods of drying porcini mushrooms

Further offers to consider in detail all the ways of drying porcini mushrooms at home. To do this, you can use a special dryer, electric or gas oven and much more.

How to chop porcini mushrooms for drying

In order to prevent mushrooms from burning up and not getting dirty during drying in a Russian oven, after it has been thawed, they are cleaned from coal and ash with a damp, wet broom. After a while, a thin layer of rye straw is laid on the underneath and the mushrooms are laid down on top of it. Can be used for drying and iron baking sheets (sheets). They are also covered with a layer of straw, on top of which the mushrooms are laid with their caps down so that they do not touch. It is very important to know how to cut porcini mushrooms for drying in an ordinary Russian oven. Usually they are cut along the leg and the hat in half.

Without straw litter, mushrooms burn out and acquire an unpleasant aftertaste. Appliances are also used to dry mushrooms in the oven. For example, mushrooms are strung through the middle of the hat on thin wire tinned or stainless steel knitting needles (ramrod), stuck in wooden planks, which are then placed in the oven on the edge, in the form of gable roofs. The mushrooms on the knitting needles are dried without touching the hearth. The oven temperature must be maintained between 40 and 60 ° C. The heat covers the mushrooms on the knitting needles from all sides evenly. On the first day, the mushrooms only wilted, on the second (at the same temperature), they are dried.

At the same time, they do not burn, do not become dirty, do not dry out, and only slightly lose their smell. There is another way. Thin wooden knitting needles are made from 20 to 30 cm long. Large mushrooms are strung on long knitting needles, small - on short. The lower ends of the needles are stuck in a box of dry sand and put it in the oven. Small mushrooms dry faster, large - slower; accordingly, the former are removed from the oven earlier, the latter later. At the same time, the mushrooms remain clean and evenly dried.

How to dry porcini mushrooms on a thread

At home, you can dry the mushrooms over a hot stove, near the hot wall of a Russian or Dutch oven, strung on threads or twine. Before you properly dry the porcini mushrooms on a string, you need to clean them of dirt, cut and string.

Mushrooms are poured onto galvanized nets, which are placed in a drying chamber and rotated on a carousel. First, mushrooms are dried at a temperature of 37 to 50 ° C, then it is raised to 60–80 ° C and finally dried. Drying time in special dryers is 4-6 hours.

Recipes for drying porcini mushrooms for the winter in the sun

On hot, cloudless days, mushrooms can be dried in the sun. To do this, piercing the mushrooms with a needle through the middle of the legs and hats, string them (first large, then smaller) of 50 or more pieces onto strong threads, after which they are hung on stands in the sunshine at some distance from each other and kept until completely wilted.

According to the recipe for drying porcini mushrooms for the winter in the sun, you can also use specially made coasters with metal rods (ramrods), stringing mushrooms on them. Having placed the mushrooms in a sunny place, they are covered with gauze to protect them from dust and flies. Mushrooms sufficiently sun-dried in the sun are put in a dry room. The same thing is done when cloudy weather occurs, and air humidity increases.

Drying porcini mushrooms on a baking sheet in an electric oven

Drying porcini mushrooms in the oven on a baking sheet can be combined with pre-processing them in the sun or over a hot stove. After that, mushrooms are dried in a Russian oven, oven or over a hot stove. The best dried mushrooms are obtained when their heat treatment goes through two stages. First, prepared mushrooms are exposed to a relatively low temperature - within 30-50 ° C - for 1-3 hours.

At the same time, they are sunken due to the evaporation of a significant part of the surface moisture. Then, the drying of ceps in an electric oven is continued at a higher temperature - 70–80 ° C, which should not be exceeded, since the quality of the product is deteriorating, and ceps, in addition, blacken. Mushrooms are usually dried out at a temperature of 50-60 ° C, that is, in light heat. During drying, a constant supply of fresh air to the mushrooms and the removal of moisture secreted by them must be ensured, for which the pipe and damper of the Russian oven, the oven door are kept ajar. The use of various devices (a sieve, a board or a box of sand with vertically standing knitting needles, etc.) allows not only to avoid pollution, but also to improve the drying conditions of mushrooms, since heated air flows around them from all sides.

How to dry porcini mushrooms in a gas oven

Before drying porcini mushrooms in a gas oven, they need to be cleaned, put on baking sheets, sheets or strung on knitting needles. In this case, the mushrooms should not be in contact with each other. The study of various drying modes showed that natural drying is better not to use because of its duration, large losses of nutrients. Before drying porcini mushrooms in the oven correctly, they must first be put in the oven, heated to 45 ° C.

After the surface of the mushrooms dries, increase the temperature to 75–80 ° C. The duration of drying and drying of mushrooms cannot be determined exactly. If the caps and plates of the mushrooms are the same in size, they dry out at the same time. Dry mushrooms should be removed, and the rest should be dried, turning them from time to time.

How to dry porcini mushrooms in an electric dryer

Mushrooms can also be dried in vegetable dryers. Before properly drying ceps in an electric dryer, they are laid out on a sieve or a ribbon mesh (stainless steel) with a layer of 3-4 cm, dried for 2.5-3 hours at a temperature of 40-45 ° C, and then dried at a temperature of 60 –70 ° С (morels and stitches - at a temperature of 50–55 ° С). The dried product should be no more than 17% moisture. The yield of dried mushrooms is 10-12% of the weight of fresh ones.

How to prepare porcini mushrooms for drying

Before preparing porcini mushrooms for drying, you need to select the hats of young boletus and chop on birch bunches. Immerse the lower ends of the bites in the lids, where a third of a glass of milk is poured. Put the mushrooms in the preheated Russian oven. Evaporating, milk gives white mushrooms a unique delicate taste and a beautiful golden color. City dwellers can dry mushrooms this way in a gas oven over low heat.

See how to dry porcini mushrooms in the oven in the video, which shows the basic technology for preparing for this harvesting process.