You came home with a full basket of your favorite mushrooms – butter. Then, satisfied with the harvest, you take on its processing. However, in the process, you find that some butternuts turned red during cooking. Thoughts about delicious dishes from these mushrooms leave you and turn into a fear of harming yourself and your loved ones. What can be done in such a case? First you need to figure out why the butterflies turn red when cooked, changing their usual brown color?
Why do the legs or hats turn red when cooking?
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The main point that all mushroom lovers need to remember is that butter mushrooms do not turn red and do not turn pink when cooked. This feature usually belongs to other mushrooms – kids. The fact is that this species is very reminiscent of butterflies and belongs to their family. Even experienced mushroom pickers cannot immediately determine what got into their basket: butterdish or goat. Both of these mushrooms are known to grow in pine forests, ripening at the same time of the year. So, along with the boletus, a kid can accidentally get into the basket. At the cut and at the break, the kids turn pink, and during heat treatment they can even acquire a brown tint. Therefore, if you find that the “butter” turned red during cooking, do not worry – this is normal. Apparently, there were other mushrooms in the pan – kids, which are absolutely harmless and edible. And in terms of taste, they are in no way inferior to butter. Just pink mushrooms do not look very appetizing. This situation also applies to those cases when only the legs turn red during cooking.
So, can butternuts turn red when cooked? Sometimes it happens that on the cut of the cap the butterflies turn blue. This is due to the reaction of the cut pulp of the fungus to the air. However, when cooking, butternuts should not turn red, turn blue, or acquire any other shade. Boiled butterdish does not give a dark broth, but itself becomes light brown. If some mushrooms change color during heat treatment, do not despair. It will not affect the taste of the dish. But it will look original in mushroom soup. In the future, in order to preserve the color of the mushrooms during cooking, add citric acid to the water at the tip of a knife or 2 tbsp. 6% vinegar.
In addition, many mushroom pickers love butterflies because they do not have poisonous (false) twins. As a rule, harvesting this species is considered safer than “silent hunting” for porcini mushrooms and wild champignons. Therefore, the “butter dish” reddened during cooking is quite edible and is perfect for pickling for the winter.