Edible raincoat (real): photo and description, recipes, medicinal properties

Edible puffball is an outwardly unusual mushroom with numerous useful properties and good taste. To understand how to use it with benefit and pleasure, you need to study its description and photo.

Description of edible raincoat

The edible raincoat appears under many names, it is also called a real or pearl raincoat, spiked raincoat. Among the people, such names as hare potato, grandfather’s tobacco or dust, devil’s apple or tobacco mushroom are common.

Outwardly, the pulverizer is well recognizable, it has a characteristic pear-shaped or club-shaped fruiting body, where the stem gently flows into the hat. In diameter, the upper spherical part, or cap, is from 2 to 5 cm. The lower cylindrical part, or leg, reaches 2 cm in girth and rises to 6 cm in height. In young raincoats, the fruiting body is white, warty-spiky, while in adults it is brown or buffy, smooth and without thorns. The skin of the fruiting body is a kind of two-layer shell, smooth on the outside and leathery on the inside.

The pulp of the edible puffball is white and friable, young fruiting bodies are suitable for collection and consumption. Over time, raincoats become powdery, their flesh turns brown and dries up, if you hit such a mushroom, it will scatter like tobacco. Such fruiting bodies are no longer suitable for collection.

Twins and their differences

Since the edible raincoat has a very unusual appearance, it can only be confused with a few mushrooms. These are mainly related types of raincoats, some of them are not suitable for eating.

False raincoat ordinary

An ordinary, or lemon, false raincoat has an ovoid fruiting body similar in structure, about 6 cm in height, the surface of the fungus is covered with darkish scales. A false raincoat is not suitable for food, but it is quite simple to distinguish it from an edible one – the color of the inedible species is most often light brown or brownish, the flesh is yellow in the cut.

Warty puffball

This mushroom also has a structure characteristic of raincoats – the fruiting body does not have pronounced legs and caps, but more resembles an oblong potato in shape and size. The warty false mushroom in the upper part is covered with characteristic growths that look not like thorns, but like warts. It is not used for food, it is slightly toxic and can provoke nausea and stomach pain.

It is possible to distinguish a warty puffball from an edible one by the absence of thorns and by the pulp on the cut. In the first, it is milky white with yellowish veins; it darkens as the fungus matures.

spotted puffball

The spotted variety has the same fruiting body as the pearl edible puffball, but differs in color. Although the fungus itself is white or light yellow at a young age, its surface is covered with small brown spots, giving the duster a leopard color.

Do not eat false raincoat, as it can cause intestinal upset. The species can be distinguished by several signs – by color, by the absence of thorns on the top of the false puffball, by a very dense skin covering the fruiting body.

Death cap

The most dangerous counterpart of the edible puffball is the pale grebe. In adulthood, it is impossible to confuse an edible duster with a deadly toadstool, but young fruiting bodies have a certain similarity. An inexperienced mushroom picker can mistake a toadstool for a raincoat while it is in the “egg” stage and barely rises above the ground, representing a convex oblong white fruiting body without a pronounced leg.

The species can be distinguished from each other by the skin, in the duster it is rough, covered with warty outgrowths-thorns, while the young pale grebe is completely smooth.

Where and how to grow

On the territory of Our Country and throughout Eurasia, the fungus is ubiquitous – it can be found in the Central region, and in the south, and in the northern regions, and in the Far East. The edible raincoat grows in coniferous and mixed forests and in meadows, on roadsides and pastures; the species is not too demanding on soils. It appears most often after heavy rains, which is the reason for its name.

Sometimes you can see a raincoat alone, but more often it bears fruit in small groups. The species grows from the beginning of summer until late autumn, it is met from the beginning of June until November.

Is the mushroom edible or not?

Contrary to stereotypes, pearl puffball belongs to the category of edible and quite tasty mushrooms. It can be processed in almost all ways, but there is one condition – only young fruiting bodies with dense white pulp are suitable for eating.

The composition and calorie content of edible raincoats

Edible raincoat not only has a delicate pleasant taste, but can also benefit the body. The composition of its young pulp includes:

• fats and polysaccharides;
• antibiotic compounds;
• vitamins and minerals;
• valuable amino acids, including leucine;
• tyrosine;
• ergosterine;
• calvacic acid and digestive enzymes.

Among the useful properties of an edible raincoat, one can note its increased nutritional value, even higher than that of champignon. At the same time, the calorie content is low – only 27 kcal per 100 g of pulp.

How to make edible raincoats

The edible mushroom is suitable for all cooking methods, it can be boiled and fried, pickled and frozen. But, first of all, it is required to process the fruiting bodies – after harvesting, they are carefully cleaned of debris, trying not to damage the pulp, and the rough upper skin is removed. Then the skin on the pulp is picked up with a knife and carefully rolled up with your fingers.

The peeled pulp is cut into small pieces, at the same time checking for the absence of worminess, and boiled in the standard way for 15-20 minutes in salted water.

Edible raincoat recipes

Several recipes for making young raincoats are especially popular. After the initial processing, you can prepare an edible raincoat by any means – fry, add to soup or make a separate dish with vegetables and sour cream.

Fried puffballs

The simplest recipe suggests first boiling and then frying the mushroom pulp. It is done like this:

• boiled fruit bodies are cut and rolled in flour;
• mushrooms are laid out in a pan greased with vegetable oil, salted to taste and fried for only 5-10 minutes;
• the finished dish is poured over with any sauce, mushrooms are mixed with sweet peppers or onions, and then served.

You can use mushroom pulp with boiled potatoes or pasta, the dish will be nutritious and tasty.

Soup with raincoats

Another simple cooking recipe is mushroom pulp soup. Boiled raincoats should be cut into small slices, lightly fried in a pan, and then added to chicken broth with onions and finely chopped carrots. The soup is boiled for about 10 minutes, before serving, you can also add canned peas and some greens to the broth.

Raincoats with sour cream and potatoes

A tasty independent dish are raincoats in combination with potatoes, sour cream and onions. The recipe looks like this:

• 300 g of potatoes are peeled and lightly boiled in salted water;
• while the potatoes are being cooked, clean and wash 500 g of raincoats, and then fry them in a pan for 20-25 minutes;
• after that, until a pleasant golden hue is obtained, 2 onions cut into half rings are fried in a pan, mushrooms are added to the onion, pepper and salt to taste;
• onions with mushrooms are fried for another 15 minutes, and shortly before they are ready, they are poured with 2 tablespoons of sour cream.

After that, the mushroom pulp with onions remains to be removed from the stove and served with potatoes on the table.

Harvesting edible raincoats for the winter

Several recipes suggest preparing fruiting bodies for long-term storage. In this case, it will be possible to use an edible raincoat in dried, pickled or salted form even in winter.

Pickling

A simple recipe for pickling edible raincoats looks like this:

• fresh mushrooms are processed before cooking and boiled for only 20 minutes;
• then raincoats are placed in sterile jars and poured with hot marinade;
• the marinade itself is prepared on the basis of a decoction of mushrooms – add 20 g of salt and sugar to the hot decoction, simmer for 2 minutes over low heat and pour in 60 ml of vinegar.

A jar of pickled mushrooms is tightly closed and cooled under a warm blanket, and then put away for storage in the refrigerator.

canning

Another quick recipe is canning edible raincoats:

1. About 500 g of mushroom pulp is boiled in salted water for 40 minutes.
2. Then lightly fry 3 onions and 1 chopped carrot in a frying pan.
3. Mushrooms and vegetables are mixed and ground to a puree state, and then 20 ml of vinegar is added and laid out in sterile jars.

The resulting mushroom “caviar” is suitable for eating with most dishes and can be stored in the refrigerator all winter.

Drying

Raincoats are suitable for drying – they are stored in this form for a long time, and you can add them to any hot dishes. There are 2 ways to dry mushrooms:

1. Natural way. Fresh raincoats are cleaned of forest debris, wiped with a clean cloth, and then strung on a thread and hung in one of the rooms in a ventilated place. When all the moisture has evaporated from the pulp, the dried mushroom is ready to use.
2. In the oven. Raincoats are cleaned of adhering debris and cut if necessary, laid out on a wire rack and first dried at 45 ° C, and then the temperature is slightly increased and the fruiting bodies are dried at 60 ° C for another 3 hours.

In the latter case, the oven door must be ajar so that the temperature does not rise too high.

Pickling

The most elementary recipe for harvesting for the winter is salting an edible raincoat. It is only required to boil the mushroom pulp for 15 minutes, and then lay it in layers in a glass jar, sprinkling each layer with salt. When the jar is full, it will need to be closed with gauze and a load placed on top.

After a few days, the mushrooms will release a large amount of juice, and after another month they will be ready to eat.

Freezing

Another recipe suggests freezing an edible young duster for the winter, at any time it can be removed and used for cooking. Fresh mushrooms are cleaned of adhering debris and lightly rubbed, then cut into medium-sized slices, laid out in plastic containers and sent to the freezer.

It is not necessary to boil mushrooms before freezing. You just need to make sure that the fruiting bodies are dry, if they are too wet, this will negatively affect the quality of the workpiece.

Medicinal properties of edible raincoats

Pearl raincoats have numerous useful properties – fruiting bodies are used in folk medicine. In particular, these mushrooms:

• used to heal wounds and cuts – the pulp stops bleeding, disinfects tissues and accelerates healing;
• used for the treatment and prevention of cancer – calvacin in the composition of the fungus shows good antitumor properties;
• used to remove toxins and toxins from the body – raincoats allow you to get rid of even heavy metals and radionuclides.

The pulp of pearl raincoats is used to create drugs aimed at combating bronchial asthma and tuberculosis, diabetes and thyroid diseases. It is useful to use fruiting bodies for angina pectoris, hypertension, kidney ailments and varicose veins, reduced immunity and elevated temperature.

Is it possible to grow edible raincoats on the site

Edible raincoats are suitable for self-growing, they can be bred in a summer cottage and not worry about looking for fruiting bodies in the forest.

Since mushrooms are actively throwing out spores, it will not be difficult to collect material for growing an edible raincoat. You need to wait until the time when the mushrooms are fully ripe, and then collect the right amount of spores in a prepared container.

Then on the site you need to choose a suitable place – it is desirable that it be located in the shade, in sparse grass, on moist soil. The seeds of an edible raincoat are sown in loosened soil, lightly sprinkled and forgotten about until the next season; it is not necessary to take care of the raincoat spores in any way.

Fruit bodies in the sown area will appear in a year if the place was chosen correctly. From time to time, the site will need to be sown with new spores, this will ensure a good annual yield.

Conclusion

Edible puffball is a healthy and quite tasty mushroom with good culinary properties. Only young fruiting bodies are suitable for consumption, but they can be processed by all existing methods.