If you have a coniferous or mixed forest with lots of pine trees in your area, go in search of butter mushrooms between June and October. Especially on a warm, sunny morning after a downpour, you are likely to find what you are looking for - especially since the brown mushrooms with the characteristic buttery-yellow to olive-green tubes are grouped together. Fresh butter mushrooms taste particularly good fried in butter. You can also preserve the slightly bitter-tasting edible mushroom by freezing or drying.
Butter mushrooms are best dried in combination with other mushrooms
Prepare butter mushrooms properly
But before drying comes the right preparation. Already in the forest you should wipe the greasy surface of the hat with a dry and clean cloth, and also remove the coarsest dirt, sticking needles, etc. It is also advisable to immediately check the collected mushrooms for maggots, which prefer to stay inside the pulp - butter mushrooms are often eaten by maggots, but also by snails. Finally, at home, clean the mushrooms thoroughly with a brush and a cloth, but you should not wash them - this makes drying later more difficult. The hat skin should also be removed.
How to properly dry butter mushrooms
Butter mushrooms become extra flavorful as they dry. It is particularly tasty if you dry them together with other forest mushrooms - for example porcini, birch mushrooms, chestnut boletus or mutabilis - and use them as mixed mushrooms. The dried mushrooms can also be ground, and the resulting mushroom powder is ideal as a seasoning.
air dry
While this method is often suggested, it is ineffective and cannot be recommended due to the risk of mold growth.
Drying in the oven
It is better to dry the cleaned and sliced butter mushrooms in the oven instead:
- Lay the mushroom slices loosely on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.
- They should be next to each other and not on top of each other.
- Preheat the oven to a temperature of around 50 to a maximum of 70 °C.
- Dry the mushrooms in it for at least five hours.
- To allow moisture to escape, you should clamp a wooden stick between the door and the oven.
The mushrooms are dry when they break or crumble when you bend them. If, on the other hand, they are still elastic, the process is not yet over.
For professionals: drying in the dehydrator
If you often and like to dry mushrooms and perhaps also vegetables, fruit and herbs, then we recommend purchasing a dehydrator or drying oven.
tips
Furthermore, butter mushrooms can also be frozen very well.
The garden journal freshness ABC
How can fruit and vegetables be stored correctly so that they stay fresh for as long as possible?
The garden journal freshness ABC as a poster:
- as a free PDF file to print out yourself