Dried mushrooms are essential in the pantry as a flavorful ingredient. It is mostly used when cooking Asian or European dishes. The dried mushrooms add a lot of flavor to dishes even when used in small amounts, and they are pleasant in all types of stew, sauces, and soups. Before adding red mushrooms to dishes, we soak, strain, rinse, and chop them.
The dried mushrooms fall into two categories: Asian mushrooms like cloud ear, wood ear, shiitake, and matsutake European mushrooms like a morel, trumpet, chanterelle, and porcini
How to Prepare Dried Mushroom
You can get dried mushrooms from groceries at fair prices. To make the best out of your dried mushrooms, here are the steps on how to prepare dried mushroom:
First, place the dried mushrooms in a bowl, and then add hot water. For every cup of dried mushrooms, you add one cup of hot water. You then let the dried mushrooms stay in water for 30 minutes. You’ll keep stirring it to ensure all the mushrooms submerge in water.
The second step is straining the mushrooms. This will help you remove grit; dried mushrooms are gritty, which can spoil the entire dish. You can strain the mushrooms using a paper towel, coffee filter, or cheesecloth. Place the sieve on top of a bowl, and then pour the mushrooms and the liquid on it. This process will enable you to retain the mushrooms and the tasty juices; both of them are useful in making mushroom soups and sauces.
Thirdly, after straining the mushrooms, you rinse them with clean water. This step will also help in removing the grit that has remained in the mushrooms. Ensure that the mushrooms have no grit before cooking; some people even give up on dried mushrooms because they cannot eradicate the grit.
The fourth step is chopping the mushrooms. The rehydrated mushrooms are always slimy; chopping them will enable you to obtain small pieces to avoid having large slimy pieces when eating.
After soaking, straining, rinsing, and chopping the mushrooms, the next step is cooking them. Mushrooms are deep fried in olive oil or butter. You then add the liquid that you obtained after straining to the frying mushrooms. You let the mushrooms cook until the liquid evaporates and leaves a mushroom soup.
How to Store Dried Mushrooms
It would be best to store dried mushrooms in a dark place; this will help them last with full flavor for about six months to one year. Despite being edible after staying for long, the flavor of the dried mushrooms reduces with time. After soaking the dried mushrooms, you can store them in a refrigerator for one to two days. However, once you have strained the mushrooms, you need to use them immediately. You can store the liquid obtained after straining in the fridge for four to six days.
Dried mushrooms are available in many groceries, and their qualities and flavors vary. To get the best out of your dried mushrooms, ensure that you purchase the best quality. Prices guide quality, so the pricier ones tend to be of high quality and have less grit. If you get the dried mushrooms from the best brands, they can serve you for quite a while when appropriately stored in a container placed in a dark place.
