Chanterelles are ideal mushrooms for beginner cooks. Immediately after purchase or collection, they can wait in the refrigerator for up to 3 days without any consequences: they do not get wet, do not sour, and do not lose their shape. In addition, chanterelles are not wormy, and there is no need to clean them, i.e. pre-treatment is minimal. Just a charm, not a product! And how delicious they look on a plate! No matter what you cook with them, in the dish they always come out appetizingly neat, bright and unusually aromatic. I am of the opinion (as are many cooks) that mushrooms should be boiled before further cooking (unless the recipe specifies otherwise). This is done not only to reduce the time of further preparation, but also just in case, for safety reasons, so to speak - boiling will get rid of any infection. In general, today on the menu: chanterelle mushrooms. How to cook, how long to cook, whether they need to be soaked before cooking - we’ll talk about all this now.
Ingredients:
- chanterelles,
- water for cooking mushrooms,
- salt at the rate of 1 tsp. for 1.5 liters of water,
- a pinch of citric acid.
I intentionally did not indicate their quantity in the ingredients, since you can cook all the mushrooms you have at once. The main thing is that the cooking pot is spacious enough.
Rules for preparing delicious chanterelles
1. Prepare the chanterelles for cooking.
It doesn’t matter how you got the chanterelles (bought in a supermarket, at the market, or collected with your own hands in the forest), first of all, we clean the mushrooms from leaves, twigs and other dry debris, and cut off the bottom of the stem. This, in fact, completes the cleaning process.
There is no need to soak the chanterelles before cooking; just rinse the mushrooms thoroughly with running water. Although some chefs still prefer to soak the chanterelles in cold water for 1-1.5 hours, believing that this way they turn out more tender. During the washing process, the largest specimens can (but not necessarily) be cut into pieces.
2. Boil the mushrooms.
We put a pan of water on the stove, add some salt, literally throw in a pinch of citric acid (so that the chanterelles retain their bright, appetizing color) and let it boil. Then immerse the washed mushrooms in boiling water. When cooking, chanterelles (like all mushrooms) boil down significantly, so water can be poured so as to hide the mushrooms by about an inch.
Cook the mushrooms at maximum heat for 20 minutes. When cooking, leave the lid slightly open so that the boiling water does not escape and stain the stove.
When boiling, be sure to skim off the foam. If you plan to serve boiled mushrooms immediately, then during cooking you can add spices and herbs to the water to taste.
If you forgot to notice the cooking time, you can determine the degree of readiness of the mushrooms by looking into the saucepan: the finished mushrooms will completely sink to the bottom. Next, place them in a colander, rinse with cold running water and let it drain.
3. What to do next with the chanterelles.
Now boiled chanterelles can be served immediately (with butter, herbs, sour cream), fried with potatoes or baked, put into soup, canned or frozen for future use. To freeze, place the mushrooms in plastic containers or plastic bags, calculating the number of mushrooms so that each container contains one serving. Important: before freezing, try to rid the mushrooms of liquid as much as possible.
What should you do if you’ve already eaten enough of fried chanterelles during the harvest season, you’ve stored them in jars, but there’s still plenty of harvest? Of course, freeze it. This is the most rational way to store food. In addition to convenience and speed, it has another important advantage. When preparing dishes from frozen mushrooms, you will notice their fresh taste, unlike pickled or pickled mushrooms.
Before putting into the freezer, the chanterelles need to be boiled. Read on to learn how to cook chanterelle mushrooms for freezing.
Methods for freezing chanterelles
In order for frozen mushrooms to retain the taste, aroma and attractiveness of fresh ones, they must be properly prepared before freezing.
Chanterelles can be frozen raw or boiled. For fresh freezing, it is necessary to choose only young chanterelles that have grown in humid conditions, otherwise they will taste bitter. And any mushrooms are suitable for preparing boiled mushrooms.
We have already talked about this quite a bit.
Stage 1. Preparing mushrooms
- Before cooking chanterelles for freezing, select specimens that are identical in size without damage, preferably small in size.
- Soak them for 10 minutes in a large container until they are completely covered with water. Place a wooden cutting board on top and weigh it down. You should not keep the mushrooms in water for more than 10 minutes, otherwise they will become loose.
- Then clean them of any sticky leaves or dirt. Cut off the bottom of the legs. Leave the small ones whole and cut the large ones into small pieces.
- Place them in a colander and rinse well under running water. Let the water drain completely.
Stage 2. Boiling chanterelles for freezing
Ingredients:
- 1 kg chanterelles
- 2 liters of water
- a pinch of salt.
How to cook?
- Pour cold water over the chanterelles, place the pan on the stove and wait until it boils.
- Skim off any foam that has formed and cook the mushrooms over moderate heat for about another half hour.
- Place the boiled mushrooms in a colander to drain. Then place on a baking sheet in a single layer and dry.
Salt the water a little when cooking so that the mushrooms do not taste bland. Spices and herbs should not be added. You can add them when preparing dishes from already defrosted mushrooms.
Stage 3. Freezing chanterelles
- Divide the chanterelles into portions for one dish.
- Wrap them in food-grade cellophane or plastic bags and squeeze out the air.
- Place the portion packets in the freezer.
Mushrooms are a perishable product and quickly lose their attractive appearance. Therefore, they should be processed before freezing immediately after collection or purchase.
- After defrosting, mushrooms cannot be re-frozen.
- You should not store mushrooms in the freezer for more than six months.
- You can freeze boiled, fried and stewed chanterelles. After defrosting, they can be used to prepare appetizers, stews, as a filling for pies, etc.
The taste of fried mushrooms, their incomparable aroma, is familiar to many almost from childhood, especially to people living in forest areas or who have the opportunity to go mushroom hunting every year. And this, believe me, is a very exciting activity that requires attentiveness and other skills. Bringing nutritious and healthy gifts of nature from which you can prepare a great variety of delicious dishes. Often the whole family, in full, so to speak, goes for mushrooms. So this pastime is very popular as an active recreation. Moreover, you spend the whole day in nature, in clean air, in the forest!
Chanterelles
Mushrooms sometimes live up to their popular name 100%! So the chanterelles are aptly and accurately named: their appearance really looks like the curled tails of the animal of the same name. In addition, this type of mushroom is one of the cleanest environmentally (of course, provided that they do not grow somewhere in an industrial zone or on a highway, but in natural conditions, in the forest). They do not absorb any harmful substances, as some other mushrooms do, on occasion replenishing their tissues with almost the entire periodic table from the soil and surrounding atmosphere.
Do you need to boil chanterelles before frying?
This question is directly related to the previous popular belief (we don’t know how scientifically confirmed it is, though). Do you need to boil chanterelles before frying? In fact, professional chefs recommend boiling any mushrooms, just in case, at least a little before the main preparation: baking, frying (sometimes even changing the water several times - for some types). This is done, again, for the purposes of human safety. After all, people have long known that these gifts of the forest are capable of being saturated with substances from the environment and the soils on which they grow. That is why it is not recommended to carry out mushroom hunting in places with poor ecology. Do you need to boil chanterelles before frying? It is difficult to give a definite answer. After all, traditionally for some types of mushrooms, which include champignons, porcini mushrooms, saffron milk caps, and chanterelles, additional heat treatment may not be carried out if the mushrooms are fresh, just picked.
Fried chanterelles
Do you need to boil chanterelles before frying? If you are really afraid of being poisoned by forest delicacies (and people constantly hear horror stories about how in some hot years even non-poisonous mushrooms acquire the signs and properties of poisonous ones), then to be on the safe side you can boil them, but you also need to do this wisely and without excessive extremism. Of course, you will not cause any harm to the mushrooms themselves, but their taste and attractive appearance may suffer.
How long to cook?
So, how long to cook chanterelles before frying (secrets of experienced cooks):
- Neither dried nor frozen, these mushrooms are boiled before frying - only fresh, recently picked ones.
- Before cooking, you should carefully sort out the chanterelles and inspect them carefully. We leave them clean, without barrels, damage or stains. We cut out the rot.
- An important step is washing the mushrooms. Often, dirt, sand, and even insects can accumulate on forest mushrooms (especially under the caps). Therefore, it is necessary to wash them very, very carefully, literally each of the fungi, in running, without strong pressure, cool water. It is best to do this under an ordinary kitchen faucet. And also the secret of experienced housewives, who often have experience dealing with mushrooms: we fill a bowl with water at room temperature, pour the mushrooms collected in the forest into it and soak for several hours in a row. During this time, all the dirt that has dried on the forest inhabitants will become limp, and unnecessary organisms that have found shelter there will float to the surface. After soaking, drain the water, and wash the mushrooms in running water and clean them. And by the way, some people on the question of whether it is necessary to boil chanterelles before frying, at this stage already put an end to it, immediately sending the mushrooms to the frying pan. But you and I decided to move on.
- Therefore, we take a saucepan, put the already peeled mushrooms in it and fill it with water so that it covers them completely (there is approximately twice as much liquid as chanterelles). Add a whole onion and bay leaves to the pan. As soon as the water boils, cook over low heat for no more than 15-20 minutes, skimming off the foam with a slotted spoon.
- After cooking, place the mushrooms in a colander and rinse with cold water. Then you can fry the resulting semi-finished product.
However, it should still be noted that some people, when asked whether it is necessary to boil chanterelle mushrooms before frying, choose a negative answer, frying them immediately after washing, arguing that this way the taste and beneficial properties are better preserved when preparing the dish.
Summer is a real time for mushrooms, because it is in June that chanterelles begin to grow in the forest, from which skillful housewives cook delicious soups and even prepare salads. The dishes turn out to be very aromatic and appetizing, so you shouldn’t miss the opportunity to please your family with them. However, we’ll talk about cooking a little later, but now let’s figure out how to cook chanterelles.
Step by step instructions
First of all, they must be thoroughly rinsed in running water and cleaned of sand and soil. Then, when they are dry, cut the large mushrooms into several parts.
For cooking, we need an enamel pan, into which we need to pour water, add a small amount of citric acid so that the mushrooms retain their characteristic reddish color. Bring the water to a boil, and then add the mushrooms, as well as salt and pepper to taste. Approximate cooking time is 20-25 minutes. When the mushrooms settle to the bottom of the container, they are ready. Now you know how to cook chanterelles. Mushrooms should be placed on a plate, poured with sunflower oil, sprinkled with herbs and can be served both on an everyday and holiday table.
Many housewives want to know in a slow cooker. Everything is very simple and easy. We wash the mushrooms, cut them and put them on the bottom of the multi-cooker bowl, put the onion there, cut into pieces. Add spices. Next, you need to close the lid of the device and turn on the mode called “Baking”. We set the time to 20 minutes. After its expiration, the chanterelles can be consumed.
Few people know how to properly cook chanterelles in the microwave. Many people probably don’t even realize about such a wonderful opportunity. We will need a container that is heat resistant. We put chanterelles and an onion in it, sprinkle everything with spices and fill it with water. The container must be tightly closed with a lid or cling film. Turn on the microwave at full power and set the time to 20 minutes. After this, you can enjoy delicious chanterelles.
During cooking, you can and should add various seasonings. Which ones exactly? For example, dill or parsley. Some housewives add coriander. Chanterelles absorb the aroma of seasonings and become even more delicious.
Frying mushrooms
How to cook chanterelles before frying? Some argue that they can be fried immediately without heat treatment beforehand, but this is incorrect. It will be better if you soak the chanterelles in milk before frying so that they become tender and delicious. The duration of the process is one and a half hours. After this, the milk is drained and the mushrooms are boiled as described above. Now you can start frying. We hope you will no longer be tormented by the question of how to cook chanterelles before frying.
Cooking soups
Now let’s look in detail at how to cook soup with chanterelles. There are many recipes, let's look at some of them.
This soup is quite easy to prepare. We will need the following ingredients:
We wash the mushrooms in water, cut them into pieces, put them in a bowl, fill the mushrooms with water and salt. You need to cook for 5-7 minutes. Next, pour out this water and fill the chanterelles with new water, in which they will cook until the end of cooking.
It's the turn of the potatoes. Cut it into small cubes and put it in the soup. Grate the carrots and add them to the mushrooms. We also finely chop the onion and add it to the rest of the ingredients.
When the soup is ready, you can add sour cream or finely chopped garlic to it. This will make the dish even more appetizing. Enjoy the great taste, bon appetit!
Cream cheese is a good idea!
You can also make chanterelle soup with the addition of melted cheese. It is quite thick in consistency, but you can be sure that even the most demanding taste will please you.
So, let's start cooking and decide on the ingredients:
- 300-500 g chanterelles;
- 2-4 pcs. potatoes;
- 2-3 carrots;
- 100-120 g processed cheese;
- 3-4 green onions;
- 20-40 g butter;
- basil;
- Bay leaf;
- salt.
We prepare the chanterelles as in the previous version: wash them, cut them, and then put them in the pan. Pour water over the mushrooms, cover with a lid, and cook over moderate heat for 15-20 minutes. If foam appears, it must be carefully removed with a spoon.
While the mushrooms are cooking, let's take care of the green onions. Cut it and fry it in vegetable oil.
Let's cut the carrots into rings and also put them in the frying pan.
Don't forget about the chanterelles that are boiling. After 15 minutes, you need to add chopped potatoes. Cook for another 15-20 minutes, after which we add fried onions and carrots to the soup, as well as bay leaves, salt, pepper and, of course, processed cheese, which is best ground in a blender until smooth.
After the soup boils, add basil to it and turn off. Serve hot, pour into plates and enjoy the wonderful taste!
Medicinal properties
Probably not everyone knows that chanterelles are beneficial for the human body. They contain vitamins and microelements that are beneficial to health. These mushrooms are especially beneficial for the liver. They also have antimicrobial and strengthening effects. Therefore, prepare a variety of dishes from these mushrooms and eat them for your health!
Finally
From this article you learned how to cook chanterelles. These mushrooms are an excellent ingredient for many delicious dishes. So stock up on them and start cooking.
These mushrooms got their cheerful name for their yellow-orange color, reminiscent of fox skin. Thanks to him, chanterelles can be spotted in the forest from afar, and collecting them is a real pleasure, especially since, as a rule, they grow in groups.
Chanterelles also contain ergosterol, which affects liver enzymes, so an extract from these mushrooms is used in medicine to cleanse the liver and treat liver diseases and, in particular, hepatitis. Due to the high content of essential amino acids and microelements, eating chanterelles helps improve vision, and the antibiotic substances they contain inhibit the growth of tubercle bacilli and help with sore throats. Externally, dry chanterelle powder was used to treat abscesses and boils.
It turned out that chanterelles have an antitumor and immunostimulating effect on the body.
How long to cook chanterelles
How many beneficial properties of these mushrooms are harmful to heat treatment! Many active substances contained in them are simply destroyed when heated to 60°C. If you salt chanterelles in a cold way, table salt has such a destructive effect. Therefore, if you want to use chanterelles for medicinal purposes, they should be dried raw and crushed into powder, which can be used both externally and internally, in the form of a tincture.
For food, chanterelles do not need to be boiled beforehand, changing the water, since they do not contain toxic substances. Like porcini mushrooms, before cooking, just wash and peel the chanterelles by cutting off the tip of the stem. Large specimens can be cut in half. To make the soup, place them in boiling water and simmer for 20 minutes before adding the remaining ingredients. If you want to fry the chanterelles, add water to the frying pan and, putting the mushrooms in it, simmer them until the water has evaporated, then add the oil, onion and fry. For hot pickling, it is enough to boil them in brine for 20 minutes, and then put them in jars, sprinkle them with garlic and dill, and pour them with the same brine in which they were boiled.
How to cook chanterelles?
Chanterelles- a favorite object of mushroom pickers. This elegant mushroom with a yellow cap that looks like a frilly skirt has an amazing feature - it does not wrinkle during transportation and does not crumble. Therefore, when you go “hunting” for chanterelles, you can take with you not only the traditional baskets for a mushroom picker, but also backpacks and bags.
There are a lot of recipes with chanterelles. But especially good chanterelles in saffron sauce. For this dish you need 1 kilogram of chanterelles, 1 onion, 3 cloves of garlic, a glass of yogurt or 20% cream, three tablespoons of butter, a little salt and black pepper and 2 tablespoons of apricot jam and half a teaspoon of saffron. Fry finely chopped garlic and onion in oil until golden brown. Pour a tablespoon of boiling water over the saffron, let it brew for 5 minutes. Rinse the chanterelles, finely chop and fry in oil in a frying pan. Mix the liquid that comes out of the mushrooms with jam and black pepper, add salt and pour back into the pan. Mix cream (yogurt) with swollen saffron, add it all to the mushrooms. Everything is mixed hot and served to the table. Your guests will be delighted!
Before you start cooking fresh chanterelles, they should be cleared of forest debris (leaves, pieces of dirt, needles). Large chanterelles should be cut into four parts, rinsed well under running water, placed in an enamel pan with plenty of water (the volume of water is 2 times more than the volume of mushrooms) and cooked for twenty-five minutes, periodically removing the foam. It is not at all necessary to salt the water when cooking chanterelles, since all the mushrooms will then be used to prepare various dishes, where the required amount of salt will be added.
If you are making soup from chanterelles, then add the washed and chopped mushrooms to the amount of water that corresponds to the volume of the soup. When stewing chanterelles, the cooking time is longer - about 45 minutes. Sometimes ready-made stewed chanterelles are added to almost ready-made vegetable soup and boiled for 10 minutes. The taste is excellent.
Chanterelles can also be boiled and then, after cooling, frozen for the winter. These boiled and frozen chanterelles are an excellent semi-finished product for preparing all kinds of dishes. The convenience of cooking before freezing is that boiled chanterelles take up much less space in the refrigerator than raw ones.
And finally, one piece of advice. When collecting chanterelles in the forest, do not confuse them with false chanterelles, which at first glance do not differ from real ones. But still, upon careful examination, the differences are noticeable. False chanterelles do not have a notch on the cap, but a tubercle, their legs are thinner and the “frill” of the cap is not as pronounced as those of real ones. False chanterelles, unlike true ones, almost devoid of pleasant aroma. False chanterelles are not fatal to humans, but in some cases they can cause stomach upset. Due to the lack of aroma, false chanterelle is not at all tasty in dishes.
How to cook chanterelles
If you do a survey among mushroom lovers, the largest percentage will be chanterelle mushrooms, which have an incredible taste if cooked correctly. Many people prefer to cook chanterelles, because when boiled they acquire a refined and rich taste that is unlikely to be compared with other varieties of mushrooms.
In addition to their taste characteristics, chanterelles are also quite healthy; they contain the required amount of carotene. You can also note the fact that chanterelles are almost never found with the presence of worms or other insects, and this is good news. They are not overly fragile mushrooms, so you can easily transport them from place to place and be sure of their integrity and safety.
Preparation before cooking
Like all mushrooms, chanterelles grow in the forest under natural conditions, which is why they are not clean. Before cooking, be sure to rinse them thoroughly and leave them aside for half an hour. The ideal option would be to use milk as a marinade.
We take a large bowl, pour the required amount of chanterelles into it and pour milk on top until it covers the mushrooms. Set aside the container with the mushrooms and marinade for 60-90 minutes, until they are completely soaked in milk. This relieves the chanterelles of unnecessary bitterness, which can ruin all the flavor characteristics after cooking.
It is not necessary to cook chanterelles on the stove; today, a slow cooker is an excellent alternative. Simply place everything in the slow cooker and set the “baking” mode.
Cooking chanterelles correctly
- The process of preparing chanterelles begins with cleaning and washing them. It is necessary to get rid of dust and debris on them, pass them through a colander until they take on a beautiful and appetizing appearance.
- Soak them in water or in a marinade with milk for 1-1.5 hours, giving them the opportunity to soak well and gain a beautiful and delicate appearance.
- Take a container and place mushrooms in it.
- Fill the chanterelles with water. There should be twice as much as the mushrooms themselves. That is why, if you cook a large number of chanterelles, make sure you have a large vessel.
- Let's add a little salt. If you are preparing mushrooms as a side dish for a dish that already contains a sufficient amount of salt, then it is not necessary to salt the mushrooms themselves. They do not require increased salt attention.
- It is necessary to cook for 20-25 minutes over medium heat.
- During cooking, foam will appear, which must be skimmed off.
- After cooking the mushrooms, drain the water through a colander.
- Dried chanterelles can also be cooked for 20 minutes, but in this case, they must be soaked in the marinade for at least 3 hours.
How to cook chanterelles before frying
Before frying chanterelles, they also need to be boiled so that they acquire a delicate and incredible taste. In this case, the chanterelles are cooked for 15 minutes, and only then proceed to the frying process.
After cooking, drain the water and prepare the frying pan. It is necessary to fry until a golden crust forms. You can add onions for richness. Only after cooking, fried mushrooms will acquire a crispy and delicate taste that cannot be compared with anything else.
To prepare tasty and healthy chanterelle mushrooms, be sure to take care of hygiene and wash them, remove dust and forest pollution. Just a few hours with the marinade can give you a delicious dish or addition to it. You yourself choose the method of preparing mushrooms, but both boiled and fried mushrooms have incredible taste characteristics that are unlikely to have their own kind.
