dried mushrooms Drying is one of the most affordable andsimple ways to prepare mushrooms. Dried mushrooms are well preserved for a long time. They are superior to pickled and salted mushrooms in digestibility and nutritional value. In terms of protein content, dried fruits are superior to canned ones. When dried, all the nutritional qualities are preserved, and the aroma of some species is even enhanced by this method of preparation, for example, in the porcini mushroom.

Drying mushrooms: what you need to know about this method

But not all edible mushrooms can be dried.Many lamellar mushrooms contain bitterness, which does not disappear during drying. They are not suitable for drying. The following types of mushrooms can be dried at home:

  • from marsupials - white truffle, morels, morel cap;
  • from tubular - aspen mushrooms, porcini mushrooms, birch mushrooms, all types of butter mushrooms, boletus mushrooms, oak mushrooms, goat mushrooms, Polish mushrooms;
  • from tinder fungi — variegated and branched polypores, ram mushroom;
  • from the lamellar - summer and winter honey fungus, autumn honey fungus, champignons, scaly mushroom, variegated parasol mushroom, deer mushroom, hairy scaly cap;
  • from the chanterelle family - the common chanterelle.

Drying depends on the region, the specific placecollection, transportation features and technical capabilities. Each experienced housewife has and uses her own drying methods, developed over the years. You can dry the fruits in the fresh air (in the sun), in an oven, in an oven, over an electric or gas stove, on exotic heating devices - a kerosene stove or a primus stove, on central heating batteries, using modern microwave ovens, etc. If you want to simplify and speed up drying, use a microwave oven for this. In a word, if you need to save time, then a microwave oven will do a good job of this task, and the mushrooms will dry quickly and efficiently.correct drying of mushrooms in a microwave oven

Drying technology in microwave oven

Before drying mushrooms in the microwave,Inspect them thoroughly. Choose whole, firm and fresh fruits, without rot, cracks and parasitic worms, throw away all the rest without regret. Use a dry cloth to carefully remove pine needles, soil residues, moss and other "gifts of nature". Try to wipe off all the dirt as thoroughly as possible so that you don't need to wash the mushrooms. Washing complicates their drying and contributes to the rapid darkening of the fruit. In cooking, there is a rule for choosing a variety of mushrooms: all types of marsupial and tubular edible mushrooms are suitable for drying, while lamellar mushrooms are not recommended for drying. This is due to the property of the latter to acquire a bitter taste during moisture loss. An exception to this rule is champignons and honey mushrooms, which tolerate drying without problems and unwanted "side effects". If time permits, let the mushrooms dry in the sun immediately before drying in the microwave. To do this, they should be strung on a coarse thread or fishing line, leaving a gap between the bodies (do not allow them to touch each other) and hung in the open air. Due to the preliminary preparation of the fruits, drying will occur gradually, and will have the best effect on the result. This stage is not mandatory, but desirable. It can be skipped or immediately after drying proceed directly to the drying itself.

  • Mushrooms, clean, fresh or withered, cuton about the same pieces. Usually, the hats are cut into slices, and the legs are cut in circles about 2 cm in thickness. Such cutting is mainly applied to podereozovikam, white fungus and boletus. If you are preparing to dry agaric honey, chanterelles or maslata, it makes sense to leave only hats. Well, morels and stitches are better not to cut and completely dry.
  • Spread the prepared pieces of mushrooms evenly on a glass pan or flat dish in a microwave oven. Turn it on for 20 minutes at a power of 100-180 watts.
  • After automatically turning off the microwavetake out the dishes with mushrooms, drain out the liquid that has separated out (otherwise the fruits will not dry, but cook), leave the oven door open for airing for about 5 minutes. But the drying process does not end there, it's in full swing.
  • Repeat several more times the previous 20-minute cycle of the microwave oven and airing. The number of such repetitions depends on the size, grade and thickness of the pieces.
  • determination of fungi

    Determine the readiness of fungi

    The readiness of mushrooms is determined by the followingsigns: they seem dry, but at the same time retain a certain elasticity, bend, but do not break immediately, but only with a little effort. Once this state is reached, you can consider that the mushrooms are well dried. If the pieces of fruit do not bend, but immediately break with a crack or even crumble, then they are overdried. It is unlikely that you will be able to use them as independent components of culinary dishes, but you can still save the product by making a mushroom seasoning from it. Using a coffee grinder, grind the overdried mushrooms into powder. The resulting mushroom flour can be mixed simply with salt or dry spices. It perfectly retains the mushroom aroma and imparts it to dishes if you add it to the dishes a couple of minutes before cooking. Dried mushrooms retain their natural aroma for a very long time, sometimes for years, if you properly observe their storage conditions. Otherwise, the preparations quickly absorb moisture from the air, become damp and spoil. That is why it is best to choose a dry, well-ventilated place for storing dried mushrooms. It is advisable to pack them in glass containers or in water-proof bags. In addition to high absorption properties, dried mushrooms easily absorb foreign odors. Make sure that other products with a strong aroma are not kept near them for a long time.

    Features of drying mushrooms in a microwave oven

    Despite all the undoubted advantages,The microwave oven also has its drawbacks when it comes to using it for drying mushrooms. To obtain a high-quality, not over-dried and not raw product, a certain skill is required. As a rule, it comes only with experience, so be prepared for the fact that the first batches may be spoiled. Also, here you can take into account the second feature of drying mushrooms in the microwave: the duration of this process. Many microwaves do not have a large capacity. Thus, following the technology of laying out mushrooms in one layer, taking into account several repeated drying cycles, you will have to spend enough time from the beginning of cooking the fruit to obtaining the final result. But this does not detract from the advantages of dried mushrooms themselves. Having spent patience and some time, you will get a fragrant, rich, nutritious seasoning for various culinary experiments. In addition, dried fruits retain all the beneficial qualities of fresh mushrooms, making their smell and taste more expressive. Their weight decreases by about 10 times, and the nutritional properties become concentrated by the same amount. Dried mushrooms retain more protein than pickled, salted or preserved in any other way. They are stored much longer and easier, taking up very little space. In a word, there are solid advantages to preparing mushrooms this way.

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