This way they stay fresh longer

Pay attention to freshness when shopping

Due to their high water and protein content, all mushrooms perish quickly. For this reason, you should pay attention to freshness when shopping: Mushrooms sold in plastic packaging in particular become quick bad. But you can recognize fresh mushrooms by these characteristics:

closed or half-closed hat
firm, crisp fruiting body
no dark spots on hat and stem
pleasantly mushroom, aromatic-fresh smell
older mushrooms often have a slightly musty smell

Prefer young mushrooms when collecting

If you have meadow or other edible Collect mushrooms, do you prefer young, closed or half-closed specimens. The bigger a mushroom is, the older it is - and often spongy in the flesh and infested with maggots. Because mushrooms contain up to 75% protein, they perish just as quickly as fresh meat. It often happens that hungry snails and beetles have beaten the collector and have already nibbled on the mushroom. You and your boarders can remove these feeding spots with a knife with a clear conscience.

Store fresh mushrooms properly

Fresh mushrooms should be eaten immediately after purchase or be prepared after collecting, because then they taste best. If that is not possible, you can also store the mushrooms in the refrigerator at temperatures between one and seven degrees Celsius for up to four days. You should observe the following rules:

Remove the outer packaging, especially plastic, from purchased mushrooms.
In this way you prevent the formation of condensation, which in turn favors the formation of mold.
Do not clean and cut the mushrooms until you are ready to cook them.
To wash Don't you the mushrooms.
Wrap the mushrooms in a dry cotton or linen cloth.
Keep them in the fridge's vegetable drawer.
Also, do not leave fresh mushrooms out of the refrigerator for more than a day!

Although mushrooms should only be cleaned before preparation, this only applies to purchased specimens. You can roughly clean the field mushrooms you have collected yourself and remove damaged areas and maggots at home. Uncleaned wild mushrooms can otherwise be eaten in the refrigerator by undetected maggots.

Prepare the mushrooms for preparation

Like all mushrooms, mushrooms should always be clean dry and never wash, otherwise they will absorb a lot of moisture unnecessarily. Otherwise you will need a kitchen board, a sharp kitchen knife, a mushroom brush (or a round brush) and kitchen paper for cleaning. First, the mushroom hats are cleaned with kitchen paper or by scraping with a knife. Often it is enough if the fungus is simply rubbed off with your fingers. Then the handle is cleaned by scraping and cutting. Carefully remove any remaining dirt with the mushroom brush or a fine paintbrush. Then cut the collected mushrooms lengthways to check for maggot damage. Finally, the mushrooms are cut into slices or coarse pieces as desired.

How to make mushrooms last longer

Do you want the mushrooms or even a mushroom dish prepared with it will last longer make durable, you can either freeze or dry the cleaned and cut mushrooms. Mushrooms are also very suitable for boiling or boiling. Waking up or for preserving in vinegar or oil.

Freeze

Frozen at around minus 18 degrees Celsius, fresh mushrooms can be kept for up to six months. For this purpose, however, only freeze the mushrooms in a freezer, not in the freezer compartment of the refrigerator. This does not reach the temperatures required for a longer shelf life, which is why the mushrooms stored in it must also be used up within a short time. Prepared mushroom dishes must be shock-frozen fresh and immediately after cooking or frying, as they spoil very quickly and harmful bacteria can colonize. They keep in the freezer for a maximum of two to three months.

dry

Mushrooms can be dried relatively well, which is best done in a special automatic dehydrator. If you don't have one, you can dry the thinly sliced mushrooms on a baking sheet in the oven. To do this, heat the oven to 50 to a maximum of 70 ° C and clamp a wooden spoon between the door and the oven - this allows any moisture to escape. However, the procedure takes several hours.

Tips

You can make a mushroom powder from dried mushrooms, which is wonderfully suitable as a seasoning for soups, sauces and other dishes. All you have to do is grind the dried mushrooms, for example in a coffee grinder.