I underestimated the yield of my homegrown mushrooms. I thought I would have a steady supply over the next few weeks, but instead, they all matured at once. As a result, I now have 2-3 kg of mushrooms, with another batch expected in about a week. I plan to make a pasta-mushroom casserole, pizza, capsicum-mushroom lecso, and mushroom cream soup, but I still have a lot left. Do you have any suggestions for how I can use them?
You can always dry them. Allegedly you can freeze them if you cook/steam them beforehand, but I have never tried that.
We freeze raw shiitake all the time. It works OK with button mushrooms as well. With the latter, the texture can suffer a bit so it might not be good for your usecase (or you might want to slice and/or cook them first, but I’ve never done that).
Slice them, then either steam or sautee them.
Then put them on a cookie sheet, let them cool off completely and put the sheet in a freezer.
Scrape them off with a spatula, vacuum-pack them and put the bags back in the freezer.
They’ll last for a year.Line the pan with parchment so you don’t have to scrape the pan.
Slice and dehydrated some!
Dehydrated mushies can be kept (long shelf life) to add to meals. Or put them through a food processor to make a powder (takes up much less space, if that’s an issue for you) which is great for extra flavour in soups, sauces, casseroles, etc.
Mushroom stock comes to mind. Just, uh, makes sure to rinse them well first. (forget cloudy stock. sandy stock is ewww)
Quick cook and freeze, Soup (and freeze), Slice and dehydrate, Use in pasta sauce and jar
You could make a bunch of pasta sauce and freeze it. And you could also make a bunch of chili and freeze that as well. Mushrooms give it a great flavor. And lastly, vegetable soup, and freeze that.
Food dehydrator.
Dehydrate and turn into a powder. That 2-3kg will make like 200g of powder that adds a big umami hit to anything it is added to.
Mushroom ketchup and dust! Townsend’s Mushroom Ketchup
You could try to pickle them? The recipe I found uses 2tbsp sugar , 2tbsp salt, 1tbsp vinegar , black pepper and bay leaves for 1l water and 1kg of mushrooms. You cook the mushrooms for half an hour, then boil the brine as well, mix the mushrooms with the syrup, cook together for 15’ and put them to jars. I haven’t tried it yet, though.
Mushroom stroganoff, mushroom pot pies, mushroom pasta sauce. And yeah, I made a similar mistake :/
Mushroom conserve
Chicken Marsala. One cannot add too much mushroom to that dish.
Make some good old English pies!
