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Before drying porcini mushrooms, you need to familiarize yourself with all available methods. You can choose the appropriate method for harvesting boletus by comparing the available options and recommendations for 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. Ways of how to prepare mushrooms for this harvesting method are presented: wash, cut, decompose. Pay attention to the descriptions of how to dry porcini mushrooms in the dryer, how to prepare the raw materials, and how to regulate the temperature. The proposed recipes and expert advice will help you do everything right and get excellent dried mushrooms of a high quality level. In the meantime, look at how to dry porcini mushrooms in the photo, where options for cutting raw materials and its layout are presented.

Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter by drying

Fresh mushrooms cannot be stored for a long time due to the large percentage of water they contain. A few days after picking, the mushrooms wither, lose their freshness and juiciness, and become unusable. Therefore, mushrooms should only be used for consumption after a suitable heat treatment or processed into persistent food only a few hours after harvest, i.e. canned. Harvesting porcini mushrooms for the winter by drying is used if the mushroom picker has a large number of boletus mushrooms.

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

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

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

Drying is the easiest way to store 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, salted and pickled ones are inferior to them. Before drying, the 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 dry out poorly. When cleaning, you should discard the mucky, old and wormy mushrooms. 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 come from all sides, then moisture from the mushrooms will come out evenly. It is very important to correctly determine when the mushroom is dry. A properly dried mushroom does not crumble, bends slightly, breaks with effort. An underdried mushroom bends easily, it feels wet to the touch, overdried - it crumbles easily.

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

If you have a house in the village, and you have kept the Russian 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 Russian oven, or in an oven, observe the following rules: the mushrooms prepared for drying are laid out with their caps down on the grates, or strung on knitting needles like kebabs. The knitting needles should be placed on supports so that the mushrooms do not come into contact with the surface of the oven or with the bottom of the oven.

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

At temperatures below 50 ° C, they dry very slowly, 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 the moist air has a free outlet. At the beginning of drying, the stove pipe should be slightly open by two-thirds of the valve, as the mushrooms dry up, it should be slightly closed, by the end of the drying it should be closed tightly. 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 happen to dry them together, turn over often and separate the already dried mushrooms. Powdered mushrooms can be made from dried mushrooms. For making mushroom powder, you can use the same mushrooms as for drying. The powder can be used to make sauces, soups, caviar, and sprinkled on meat and fish dishes during cooking to enhance the flavor 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 grinded 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 methods of drying porcini mushrooms at home. To do this, you can use a special dryer, an electric or gas oven, and much more.

How to chop porcini mushrooms for drying

In order to prevent the mushrooms from burning and getting dirty during drying in a Russian oven, after heating it, they are cleaned from coals and ash with a wet broom. After a while, a thin layer of rye straw is laid on underneath and mushrooms are placed on it with their caps down. Can be used for drying and iron trays (sheets). They are also covered with a layer of straw, on top of which the mushrooms are placed, caps down, so that they do not touch. It is very important to know how to cut porcini mushrooms for drying in an ordinary Russian oven. Usually they are cut along the leg and the cap in half.

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

At the same time, they do not burn, do not get dirty, do not dry out, only a few lose their smell. There is also 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 knitting needles are stuck into a box of dry sand and put into the oven. Small mushrooms dry faster, large ones more slowly; accordingly, the former are taken out of the oven earlier, the latter later. At the same time, the mushrooms remain clean and dry evenly.

How to properly dry porcini mushrooms on a string

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

The mushrooms are poured onto galvanized nets, which are placed in a drying chamber and rotated on a carousel. First, the mushrooms are wilted at a temperature of 37 to 50 ° C, then it is raised to 60–80 ° C and finally dried. 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, the 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) 50 or more pieces on strong threads, and then hang them on stands in the sun at some distance from each other and stand until completely wilted.

According to the recipe for drying porcini mushrooms for the winter in the sun, you can also use specially made stands 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 dried in the sun, mushrooms are removed 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-processing them in the sun or over a hot stove. After that, the mushrooms are dried in a Russian stove, oven or over a hot stove. The best dried mushrooms are obtained when they are cooked in two stages. First, the prepared mushrooms are exposed to a relatively low temperature - in the range of 30-50 ° C - for 1-3 hours.

At the same time, they wilt due to the evaporation of a significant part of the surface moisture. Then the drying of the porcini mushrooms in the electric oven is continued at a higher temperature - 70–80 ° C, which should not be exceeded, since the quality of the product deteriorates, and the 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 released by them must be ensured, for which the pipe and shutter of the Russian oven, the oven door are kept ajar. At the same time, the use of various devices (a sieve, a board or a box with sand with upright spokes, etc.) allows not only to avoid contamination, but also to improve the conditions for drying mushrooms, since heated air flows around them from all sides.

How to properly dry porcini mushrooms in a gas oven

Before drying porcini mushrooms in a gas oven, they need to be cleaned, laid out on baking sheets, sheets or strung on knitting needles. In this case, the mushrooms should not come into contact with each other. The study of various modes of drying showed that it is better not to use natural drying due to its duration, large losses 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 is dry, increase the temperature to 75–80 ° C. The duration of drying and drying of mushrooms cannot be accurately determined. If the mushroom caps and plates 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 properly 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 ribbon 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 contain no more than 17% moisture. The yield of dried mushrooms is 10–12% of the weight of fresh ones.

How to prepare porcini mushrooms for drying

Before preparing the porcini mushrooms for drying, you need to select the caps of the young boletus and chop them on birch splinters. Immerse the lower ends of the sprinkles in jars, where a third of a glass of milk is poured.Put the pots with mushrooms in a preheated Russian oven. Evaporating, milk gives porcini mushrooms a unique delicate taste and a beautiful golden color. City dwellers can dry mushrooms in 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 of preparing for this harvesting process.