A classic mushroom marinade recipe.
Mushrooms in marinade are a great cold appetizer, a good addition to the winter diet, but above all, it is a way to preserve mushrooms for a long time. This method of storage is especially relevant for residents of apartment buildings who do not have their own cellar.
There are many different recipes for marinades, pickling methods differ both in prescription and technologically.
Consider the simplest, classic marinade recipe. Based on it, each housewife can easily assemble her own author’s recipe.
Basic mushroom marinade recipe.
It includes four main ingredients and a few extras. The main ingredients are needed as a “preserving base”, they help to keep pickled products for a long time. We add additional ones to give our pickled mushrooms a unique taste.
- Water
- Acid
- Salt
- Sugar
Water for the marinade you should take the most common drinking water. Not suitable for the preparation of marinades mineral and carbonated water. You can use ordinary tap water after boiling it first.
As the pickling acids mushrooms, ordinary acetic acid, the so-called “table vinegar”, is used. Most modern recipes are designed for 8% or 9% table vinegar. In very old recipes, there may be acetic acid (it was sold with us as “Vinegar Essence”) 30%. In translated European recipes, there may be table, 8-9-10% vinegar, and more concentrated essences. Look carefully at the percentage in the recipe, and at what is written on your bottle.
You can try using apple cider vinegar or other wine vinegar, but experiment with a small amount of mushrooms: wine vinegar has a strong enough flavor of its own that can completely kill the taste of mushrooms. The use of balsamic vinegars for marinating mushrooms is not recommended: it will be difficult to calculate the percentage of acid and the taste of the finished product will not be mushroomy at all.
Salt coarse, so-called “Rock salt” is used, ordinary, without iodine additives.
Sugar we also use the most common, white granulated sugar, not brown sugar.
Now about proportions. Different types of mushrooms require different amounts of water. It is important that the finished mushrooms in the jars are completely covered with the marinade. Therefore, it is recommended to make a marinade with a small “margin”.
If you are marinating freshly picked, raw mushrooms, then for 1 kg of mushrooms it is enough to take 1/2 cup of water: when heated, the mushrooms will abundantly release liquid and decrease in volume.
If you pickle pre-boiled mushrooms, then for 1 kg of water mushrooms you need to take 1 glass of water.
For 1 glass of water:
- Table vinegar 9% – 2/3 cup
- Rock salt – 60-70 grams (4-5 tablespoons without a “slide”)
- Granulated sugar – 1 teaspoon
Imagine this is everything. In order to cook pickled mushrooms, nothing else is needed. Mushrooms will be stored for a couple of years, it is important not to keep the jars in the sun and near the battery. Everything else can be added just before serving: onions, aromatic vegetable oil, a few drops of balsamic vinegar, ground black or red pepper.
But a simple basic recipe is boring. I want it to be delicious right away, so that you can open the jar and immediately serve the mushrooms on the table. Therefore, the classic recipe includes not only preservatives, but also spices.
The basic mushroom marinade recipe includes (based on 1 glass of water):
- Black peppercorns – 2-3 peas
- Allspice peas – 3-4 peas
- Cloves – 3-4 “carnations”
- Bay leaf – 2 pcs
This set makes a wonderful marinade with a light taste of its own. This is a real classic mushroom marinade recipe.
You can increase or decrease the number of peppercorns, you can not add something at all, for example, when pickling porcini mushrooms, you can not add cloves so that it does not clog the taste of mushrooms.
Depending on taste preferences, the list of additional ingredients can be expanded.
In the marinade for mushrooms, you can add:
- Cinnamon (ground or sticks)
- Dill (dry)
- Garlic (cloves)
- Tarragon (tarragon)
- Koriandr
- horseradish leaf
- horseradish root
- Cherry leaf
- Cherry sprigs (thin, but with bark, last year’s growth)
- blackcurrant leaf
- Blackcurrant sprigs (thin, last year’s growth)
- oak leaf
- Red capsicum
Horseradish, cherry, blackcurrant and oak not only add their own shades to the marinade’s flavor range, but also strongly influence the texture of pickled mushrooms: they make the flesh more dense, crispy.
Pickled mushrooms do not need to be rolled up, we close them with ordinary dense plastic lids. Store in a dark cool place.
We store the opened jar in the refrigerator.
Mushroom marinade is not reused.
This article contains only the mushroom marinade recipe itself, this is a basic recipe and recommendations for changing it. Read about the technology of marinating mushrooms in the article “Pickled Mushrooms”.
In conclusion, I want to say a completely obvious thing that we often forget about.
If you’re experimenting with a recipe, remember to write down any changes you make. And don’t just write it down somewhere in your notebook – don’t forget to label the jars. Do not expect that in six months, looking at the jar, you will remember what ingredients you put there.
Let’s say you used a basic marinade recipe with ground cinnamon and cherry leaves. Believe me, it is impossible to distinguish bay leaf from cherry through glass. Write down the modified recipe in your notebook in full, and stick stickers with a shortened version of “Oil, marinade + cinnamon + cherry” on the jars. And be sure to write the date of preparation on the sticker.