Preserving The Mushroom Crop

Having a chance to go out into the woods to forage for wild mushrooms is a true joy of this time of year. The bummer about it is what to do with all those buckets of fungi once I have them off the hill.

I try passing them out and sharing as much as I can. Complete strangers have been asked if they like mushrooms. It always surprises me how many people have never even tried wild mushrooms. Living in an area that naturally grows plentiful, delicious mushrooms I had always assumed that everyone loved them. The plethora of mushrooms leaves me with lots of fungus to clean and preserve.

Drying has been my number one way of preserving, until this year. My dehydrator decided to poop out on me after all my apples, pears, plums, strawberries and veggies. Mike, bless his heart, picked me up a new one when he went into town. It was the very last one he could find and he checked at several stores. It was such a sweet thing to do and I am very grateful that he did, but the last available unit is a basic model that does not have a temperature control. It has one factory setting that is good for most fruit and vegetables but does not allow me to do any drying with less heat that is required for things like nut meats, mushrooms and really ripe pears. The dehydrator is just too aggressive for the more tender items and they come out of the unit black and unappealing. I may have to borrow a dehydrator with a temperature control before the end of the season so I can get my usual five- one gallon bags  of dried mushrooms for this year.

I have been doing more freezing with a quick sauté to get the mushrooms to release their moisture first. I use silicone mini-cupcake and regular sized cupcake pans to freeze the mushrooms (I keep the juice with the mushrooms). Once frozen, I bag them up to store in the freezer. It makes it easy to use one or two at a time for stews, soups and casseroles.

With the very last gather of last year, I got the idea of pickling Chanterelles. They were fantastic! I even tried my hand at pickling a rare find for me of a cauliflower mushroom with great results. So far this year I have pickled and canned a couple of batches and will continue to do so.

I had a good bunch of lobster mushrooms the other day that were too many for me to eat by myself and no other person in my family cares for them. They have an extremely short shelf life and I needed to do something with them before they spoiled. I tried pickling them and they are a wonderful surprise. The more meaty texture of the lobster mushrooms hold the pieces together and work well for canapés or snacks.

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