Picking mushrooms is not only fascinating, but also very responsible. After all, gaining anything in the basket, you can poison yourself and endanger your loved ones. Inexperienced mushroom pickers, having studied how the fly agaric and pale grebe look , think that this is enough to protect themselves from the poison growing in the forest. And bringing home a basket (or even two full buckets), these collectors are already looking forward to a delicious meal. But in the end, you can’t take a spoon in your mouth because of the caustic taste. Let's look at the reasons why mushrooms are bitter.
Insidious doubles
Mother Nature, along with edible mushrooms, scattered their poisonous clones in the forest. First of all, these are false mushrooms, boletus, chanterelles, champignons, butterflies and even surprisingly similar to white ones mushrooms. Therefore, answer No. 1 to the question, why mushrooms are bitter, this: along with the right gifts of the forest, you scored their poisonous counterparts. Even one such false honey agaric, clawing in a bast basket, can ruin an entire dish with unbearable bile. I'll have to throw it all away, no matter how sorry. It is better to verify the truth of the find on the spot. As a rule, false mushrooms are very beautiful: bright, not touched by worms and snails. In addition, you can touch the tip of the tongue to the cut of the hat. The deadly poisonous satanic mushroom is similar to cep, but its Ukrainian name “mustard” speaks for itself. In addition, on the cut it turns blue and blushes.
Incorrect processing
Another reason why fried mushrooms are bitter is their incorrect cooking. There are species that are edible and even very tasty and wholesome - such as, for example, milk mushrooms. But just do not clean them and crumble into the pan in no case. Such mushrooms are first soaked and drained. Then boil (some cooks even several times). In addition to the mushrooms, Russula and some chanterelles are also bitter in the pan. All mushrooms collected in coniferous forests gain a resinous aftertaste into fruit bodies, which not everyone likes.
Fickle foxes
Even experienced mushroom pickers, who know exactly what they put in a basket and how to cook it, sometimes get an absolutely inedible dish at the exit. What's the matter? Indeed, in the pan - chanterelle mushrooms. Why are they bitter, although they had been tasty a week earlier in the same place? The answer is simple: climate. If there is insufficient moisture, the juice inside the fruiting bodies becomes bile. Therefore, mushrooms collected in the summer heat are bitter. The same applies to the chanterelles found in the moss in the fir tree - the pungent taste of the resin makes them almost inedible.
Ecology
In the question "why mushrooms are bitter" you can not discount the conditions in which fruiting bodies grew. Their spongy structure absorbs everything that is worn in the air, spilled in groundwater or lies in the ground. Champignons found in city squares are sprinkled not only with summer rain, but also with numerous dogs, so urine is clearly heard in their taste. At the roadsides, mushrooms are not only not tasty, but also dangerous to health. Even boletus contains heavy metals and exhaust poisons.
We seem to have noted all the reasons why mushrooms are bitter. Alas, the spoiled dish cannot be corrected in any way - it needs only to be thrown away. Bitterness does not always mean poisoning. But God save, as they say, saves. Therefore, drinking activated carbon will be useful. Usually deadly poisonous mushrooms are neutral in taste, and the consequences of their use are much worse than simple bitterness. There is only one conclusion - learn the materiel!