What kind of mushrooms - oyster mushrooms? How to clean them before cooking? Where to looking for? Today we will just consider this topic. Mushrooms with this gentle name are now becoming incredibly popular. Dishes with their addition are popular with the most picky gourmets. But before preparing any of these gifts of nature, it is important to learn how to clean oyster mushrooms correctly so that they please tasters and not become an object of grief and disappointment.
Where to get these mushrooms?
The best option is to get them yourself in the forest. Their locations are drying trees. Felled trunks. Right on the bark, these mushrooms begin to nucleate.
Do you like to experiment and do independent mushroom cultivation? There is nothing easier. In the conditions of a summer cottage they grow well on straw from cereal crops and in sunflower husks.
But if you can not be attributed to inveterate mushroom pickers, then in this case they can simply be purchased in a large supermarket. Today on sale it is easy to meet oyster mushrooms in fresh as well as frozen.
Product Usefulness
Before you purchase and clean oyster mushrooms to prepare a delicious dish, we will get acquainted with their positive and negative sides. Good moments:
- Mushrooms are low in calories, but they can dull the feeling of hunger.
- The composition is replete with mineral components such as calcium, iodine, iron.
- Vitamins: C, B, E, PP - are found in large quantities in mushrooms.
- They remove radiation from the human body.
Nuances - not cons
Such mushrooms have a drawback. You need to know about this before cleaning oyster mushrooms. Mushrooms do not differ in bright aroma. In general, when these gifts of nature are being prepared, you, without having a very sensitive sense of smell, can only barely catch their aroma. Some tasters don't like it.
And here is one more nuance and you need to remember about it before cleaning oyster mushrooms. It is not negative or positive. It is worth taking it as a fact. Mushrooms are covered with a thin chitinous cut. And the human body does not cope with the digestion of the chitin layer. But this does not mean that you need to push the idea with the preparation of mushroom treats. It is enough at the end of cooking to fry the finely chopped mushrooms well and the cut itself will collapse.
Cleaning Rules: Dry, Preliminary
Do I need to clean oyster mushrooms purchased on the market or independently collected in the forest? Sure! But before the procedure itself, it is important to remember these rules:
- Do not let laziness overpower you. After arriving from the forest (or from the market), from where you delivered some of these mushrooms to your home, you do not need to forget about them for a long time. Having a little rest, you need to immediately begin to release them from garbage, sand and other inedible inclusions.
- How to clean fresh oyster mushrooms from the forest? We spread it on a dry plane and first remove the dry, well-off garbage: twigs, scraps of leaves, straw or grass.
Water for cleaning
After dry cleaning, you can proceed with more radical measures:
- Pour water for twenty minutes (cold and clean) so that the remaining debris leaves. That does not depart from the fungus is removed by hands. It is allowed to use small foam sponges, they will help delicately remove dirt from the caps.
- Cut the tip of the mushroom leg. After all, there, as a rule, there is a site that is difficult to completely clear of interspersed dust and bark.
- Now rinse all the mushrooms under the tap. Pour clean cold water again. Add salt and, after dissolving it, put peeled oyster mushrooms in water. The procedure is aimed at preventing the darkening of the pulp of peeled mushrooms.
- Now we take them out of the water and cook as you like, based on the recipe.
An important condition when cleaning oyster mushrooms - we act gently and without rushing. The fact is that any careless movement can destroy the integrity of the mushroom cap. Oyster mushrooms are a very fragile gift of nature.
Mushroom cake mix
Do I need to clean oyster mushrooms before cooking, or can I do this in reserve?
A rich mushroom crop can be prepared and immersed in deep freeze. So, we clean the mushrooms step by step, so that at any convenient moment we have an almost finished product:
- Sort the mushrooms before cleaning.
- We diligently, but at the same time, carefully wash the forest gifts. We preliminarily hold all the oyster mushrooms in a bulk dish generously filled with cold water. Soaking time no more than thirty minutes. This is enough to soak the especially contaminated areas of the mushrooms.
- Now you need a very sharp and clean knife. Cut the stems of the mushrooms with a tool. Cut the dried edges of some specimens. Make sure that oyster mushrooms are not susceptible to wormholes. In addition, there should be no insects in their pulp. Hopelessly spoiled specimens, of course, immediately discarded. There may be dirt and dust on the back of the caps. It is removed with a soft brush.
- Washed mushrooms are again meticulously examined for spoilage or wormy bites. We take out (very carefully) in a colander. We place under a stream of cold water. The remains of sand and dust from the bark, if they have clogged up somewhere, will already be washed out by the pressure of water.
- We fill the basin with pure salt water and keep pure mushrooms in it for 10 minutes.
- Take out. Wipe them gently. In this delicate procedure we use multilayer paper towels. We soak the top and bottom of the mushrooms well.
- We lay out the wet mushrooms on a plane and wait 30-60 minutes. During this time, residual moisture will evaporate. We pack ready, clean mushrooms in plastic bags and send them to freeze.
Before using oyster mushrooms, it is enough to boil and fry.