In late summer and early autumn, many summer residents go to the forest for several hours to return home in a good mood and full baskets (buckets, bags or backpacks) of mushrooms. One of the most common and accessible species of them in deciduous foxes is considered to be milk mushrooms. These fragrant beauties in most cases are salted or pickled for the winter, because a specific bitter aftertaste requires quite a long preparation.
Types of breasts
Returning home with prey, mushroom pickers, as a rule, immediately begin the process of processing it. In order to pickle or pickle faster, you first need to understand how to clean the milk. Or rather, to know how to do it right, quickly and with minimal labor.
Before cleaning the breasts, they should be re-sorted. In general, in nature there are more than 20 species of these mushrooms. The largest of them - real breasts (they are wet, white or pepper) - have impressive dimensions and a pronounced bitter taste. For this reason, they should be soaked for a long time.
Black breasts (also rather big) with characteristic dark hats are better to cook separately. In addition to the bitter milky juice, which is clearly visible on the cut, these mushrooms are covered with a special sticky substance on top. Therefore, before cleaning the breasts, they should be washed well. They are recommended to be harvested without mixing different types.
Salting Methods
Regardless of the type of these mushrooms, there are cold and hot ways to cook them. Before cleaning the white breasts, they are simply filled with water and all the garbage removed. Black will still need to remove the mucus. And then with the cold method they are simply soaked for several days, periodically changing the water. When hot, the mushrooms are cooked in salt water for about 10 minutes, then they are discarded in a colander. It is very easy to remove the upper film from them, on which, as a rule, debris and soil particles remain. This procedure is optional, but still highly recommended. Moreover, the film is removed from boiled mushrooms, if they are just lightly rubbed with a brush. Then you can proceed directly to salting.
With the hot method, everything is relatively clear, but how to clean the breasts from the top film, if cold pickling is planned, is not entirely clear. As a rule, they are simply washed thoroughly under running water. It is for this reason that most housewives prefer to use the hot method. Otherwise, there is a good chance that grains of sand and other inclusions will get into the finished dish, which is not very pleasant.
How to Pickle Blanched Mushrooms: Recipe
Pre-washed, boiled and peeled mushrooms should be placed in a container in which they will be stored for a long time. An ideal option would be a wooden barrel. In its absence, an enameled pan or several glass jars will do. For each kilogram of raw milk, 50 grams of salt is taken. Oak leaves, horseradish root, allspice and peas are placed at the bottom of the container. Then lay the mushrooms in layers (large can be cut into several parts), pouring salt. Between them you can place bay leaves, pepper and parsley root. From above, the mushrooms are crushed with the help of oppression and left for 7 days. After this time they are consumed or sent for storage to a cool place. Before using salted mushrooms in salads or other dishes, they are washed (can be soaked in cold water for 30-40 minutes).