How to dry porcini mushrooms at home

Before drying porcini mushrooms, you need to familiarize yourself with all available methods. You can choose the appropriate method for harvesting mushrooms by comparing the available options and the recommendations of the drying method. This page tells you how to dry porcini mushrooms at home using a special dryer or on a baking sheet in the oven. Methods are presented on how to prepare mushrooms for this harvesting method: wash, cut, decompose. Pay attention to the description of how to dry porcini mushrooms in a dryer, how to prepare raw materials and how to adjust the temperature. The proposed recipes and expert advice will help you do everything right and get excellent quality dried mushrooms. In the meantime, look at how to dry porcini mushrooms in the photo, which shows options for cutting raw materials and its layout.

Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter by drying

Fresh mushrooms are not subject to long-term storage due to the large percentage of water they contain. A few days after harvest, mushrooms wither, lose their freshness and juiciness, and become unfit for consumption. Therefore, mushrooms should only be used for consumption after a suitable heat treatment or processing into stable food products, i.e. canned, only a few hours after harvest. Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter by drying is used if a mushroom picker has a large number of mushrooms at his disposal.

At home, mushrooms are harvested for future use by drying, pickling, salting and canning in hermetically sealed glass jars.

When drying mushrooms, up to 76% of their water is removed from them.

The remaining moisture for the development of microorganisms is not enough, which leads to their death.

Drying is the easiest way to harvest mushrooms for future use. Properly dried mushrooms are preserved for a long time without losing their taste and aroma. And in terms of nutritional value, they are inferior to salted and pickled. Before drying, mushrooms must be well cleaned of debris. They cannot be washed or moistened with water – this will reduce the quality of the mushrooms, they will lose their aroma and will not dry well. During cleaning, slimy, old and wormy mushrooms should be thrown away. Many housewives think that during drying, the worms will leave the mushrooms, but this is not so. It is best to dry mushrooms on special devices – sieves, sieves, nets.

The main condition for drying mushrooms is that air must flow from all sides, then moisture from the mushrooms will come out evenly. It is very important to correctly determine when the mushroom is dried. A properly dried mushroom does not crumble, bends slightly, and breaks with effort. An under-dried mushroom easily bends, it seems wet to the touch, over-dried – easily crumbles.

Well-dried mushrooms are similar in taste and aroma to fresh ones. After drying, about 10% of the wet weight remains in the mushrooms. Dried mushrooms should be stored at a temperature of plus 7-10 ° C and low humidity, otherwise they may become moldy. It should be borne in mind that they absorb foreign odors very easily, so they should not be stored near odorous substances.

If you have a house in the village, and you have kept the stove, then this is the best option for harvesting dried mushrooms. But you can dry mushrooms in a gas oven and on top, if you have a special drying net. If you dry mushrooms in a stove, or in an oven, follow the following rules: mushrooms prepared for drying are laid out with hats down on the grates, or strung on knitting needles like shish kebabs. The knitting needles should be placed on stands so that the mushrooms do not come into contact with the oven surface or with the oven bottom.

They should be put to dry when the temperature reaches 60–70 °C. It is not recommended to start drying at a higher temperature, as the mushrooms may become too fried and turn black.

At temperatures below 50 ° C, they dry very slowly, turn sour and deteriorate. During drying, it is very important to ensure that the moisture evaporating from the mushrooms is removed.

To do this, when closing the oven, the damper should be left ajar, preferably in the upper part, so that moist air has a free exit. The chimney at the beginning of drying should be ajar by two-thirds of the valve, as the mushrooms dry out, it should be covered a little, and closed tightly by the end of drying. In a gas oven, the door should also be left ajar. It is better to dry small mushrooms with large ones separately, as they dry unevenly. But if you happened to dry them together, turn over more often and separate the already dried mushrooms. Dried mushrooms can be made into a powder. For the manufacture of mushroom powder, you can use the same mushrooms as for drying. The powder can be used to prepare sauces, soups, caviar, sprinkle meat and fish dishes during cooking to improve the taste and aroma.

Before use, mushroom powder is mixed with a small amount of warm water and left for 20–30 minutes to swell, then added to food and boiled for 10–15 minutes. The best powder is obtained from the caps, but if you have dried the mushrooms completely, you can sift the powder through a sieve. The remaining coarse powder can be dried and ground again. The finer the powder, the better it is. Mushroom powder absorbs moisture very easily and deteriorates quickly. It should be stored in a closed glass container in a dark, dry, cool place. Before drying, the mushrooms are cut into plates, dried, then dried.

Methods for drying porcini mushrooms

Further, he proposes to consider in detail all the ways of drying porcini mushrooms at home. To do this, you can use a special dryer, electric or gas oven and much more.

How to cut porcini mushrooms for drying

So that when drying in a oven, the mushrooms do not burn and do not get dirty, after heating it, they clean it from coals and ash with a wet washcloth. After some time, a thin layer of rye straw is laid on the floor and mushrooms are placed on it with their hats down. You can use for drying and iron baking sheets (sheets). They are also covered with a layer of straw, on top of which the mushrooms are placed with their hats down so that they do not touch. It is very important to know how to cut porcini mushrooms for drying in a conventional oven. Usually they are cut along the stem and hat in half.

Without straw bedding, mushrooms burn and acquire an unpleasant aftertaste. Devices are also used for drying mushrooms in the oven. For example, mushrooms are strung through the middle of the cap on thin wire tinned or stainless steel knitting needles (ramrods) stuck in wooden planks, which are then placed on edge in the oven, in the form of gable roofs. Mushrooms on knitting needles are dried without touching the hearth. The oven temperature must be maintained between 40 and 60 °C. The heat covers the mushrooms on the spokes from all sides evenly. On the first day, the mushrooms are only dried, on the second (at the same temperature) they are dried.

At the same time, they do not burn, do not become dirty, do not dry out, they only slightly lose their smell. There is another way. Thin wooden knitting needles are made from 20 to 30 cm long. Large mushrooms are strung on long knitting needles, small ones on short ones. The lower ends of the needles are stuck into a box with dry sand and put in the oven. Small mushrooms dry faster, large ones slower; accordingly, the first ones are taken out of the oven earlier, the second ones – later. At the same time, the mushrooms remain clean and dry evenly.

How to dry porcini mushrooms on a thread

At home, you can also dry mushrooms over a hot stove, at the hot wall of a or Dutch oven, strung on threads or twine. Before you properly dry the porcini mushrooms on a thread, you need to clean them of dirt, cut and string.

Mushrooms are poured onto galvanized nets, which are placed in a drying chamber and rotated on a carousel. First, the mushrooms are dried at a temperature of 37 to 50 ° C, then it is raised to 60–80 ° C and finally dried. The duration of drying in special dryers is 4–6 hours.

Recipes for drying porcini mushrooms for the winter in the sun

On hot, cloudless days, mushrooms can be dried in the sun. To do this, piercing the mushrooms with a needle through the middle of the legs and caps, string them (first large, then smaller ones) in 50 or more pieces on strong threads, after which they hang them on stands in the sun at some distance from each other and stand until completely dried.

According to the recipe for drying porcini mushrooms for the winter in the sun, you can also use specially made coasters with metal rods (ramrods), stringing mushrooms on them. After placing the mushrooms in a sunny place, they are covered with gauze to protect them from dust and flies. Sufficiently sun-dried mushrooms are cleaned in a dry room. The same is done with the onset of cloudy weather, an increase in air humidity.

Drying porcini mushrooms on a baking sheet in an electric oven

Drying porcini mushrooms in the oven on a baking sheet can be combined with pre-treatment in the sun or over a hot stove. After that, the mushrooms are dried in a oven, oven or over a hot stove. The best dried mushrooms are obtained when they are cooked through two stages. First, prepared mushrooms are exposed to a relatively low temperature – within 30-50 ° C – for 1-3 hours.

At the same time, they are dried due to the evaporation of a significant part of the surface moisture. Then the drying of porcini mushrooms in an electric oven is continued at a higher temperature – 70–80 ° C, which should not be exceeded, since the quality of the product deteriorates, and porcini mushrooms, in addition, turn black. Mushrooms are usually dried at a temperature of 50–60 ° C, that is, in a light heat. During drying, a constant supply of fresh air to the mushrooms and the removal of the moisture they release must be ensured, for which the pipe and damper of the stove, the oven door are kept ajar. The use of various devices in this case (sieves, boards or a box of sand with vertically standing knitting needles, etc.) allows not only to avoid pollution, but also to improve the conditions for drying mushrooms, since heated air flows around them from all sides.

How to dry porcini mushrooms in a gas oven

Before drying porcini mushrooms in a gas oven, they must be cleaned, laid out on baking sheets, sheets or strung on knitting needles. In this case, the mushrooms should not be in contact with each other. The study of various drying modes showed that it is better not to use natural drying because of its duration, large loss of nutrients. Before properly drying porcini mushrooms in the oven, they must first be placed in an oven preheated to 45 ° C.

After the surface of the mushrooms dries, increase the temperature to 75-80 ° C. The duration of pre-drying and drying of mushrooms cannot be determined exactly. If the caps and plates of mushrooms are the same size, they dry out at the same time. Dry mushrooms should be removed, and the rest should be dried, turning them over from time to time.

How to dry porcini mushrooms in an electric dryer

Mushrooms can also be dried in vegetable dryers. Before properly drying porcini mushrooms in an electric dryer, they are laid out on sieves or a tape mesh (made of stainless steel) with a layer of 3–4 cm, dried for 2,5–3 hours at a temperature of 40–45 ° C, and then dried at a temperature of 60 -70 °С (morels and lines – at a temperature of 50–55 °С). The dried product should have no more than 17% moisture. The yield of dried mushrooms is 10–12% by weight of fresh ones.

How to prepare porcini mushrooms for drying

Before you prepare porcini mushrooms for drying, you need to select the caps of young boletus mushrooms and chop them into birch splinter. Immerse the lower ends of the splinters into the jars, where a third of a glass of milk is poured. Place krynki with mushrooms in a preheated oven. Evaporating, milk gives porcini mushrooms a unique delicate taste and a beautiful golden color. City dwellers can dry mushrooms this way in a gas oven over low heat.

Watch how to dry porcini mushrooms in the oven in the video, which shows the basic technology for preparing for this harvesting process.