Chanterelles are truly versatile mushrooms that are good in any form. They can be fried, salted, pickled, boiled, used for mushroom caviar. Like other mushrooms, chanterelles are salted hot and cold.
Collecting chanterelles
Chanterelles love sunny, open spaces, so picking them up is pretty easy. They appear in early summer. Against a green background, bright orange mushrooms are very clearly visible, in addition, chanterelles grow in large companies. An inexperienced mushroom picker may confuse edible chanterelles with false ones. A hat may suggest that you have found not quite what you were looking for - the false chanterelle has it velvety and brighter than the real one, and its edges are smoother. In addition, false chanterelles often grow singly. They are not poisonous, but they can ruin the dish very badly.
False chanterelles have another name - talkers.
Preparation for salting
Chanterelles are extremely rarely wormy, so they just need to be washed and cleaned of dirt. For cold salting, you can soak them for a while. There is no bitterness in these mushrooms at all, so keeping them in a basin for several days is impractical - a few hours are enough. Like other mushrooms, chanterelles can be salted in a wooden barrel or glass jar. If nothing like this is at hand, an enamel saucepan will do. The container must be well washed and doused with boiling water.
Do not use aluminum dishes for pickling mushrooms.
Traditional cold way
To salt the chanterelles, you will need more salt at the rate of 3-4% of the weight of the mushrooms, dill and garlic. Pour salt on the bottom of the jar or pan, put dill on top in one layer, and chanterelles on it. Add 1-2 black peppercorns. Add another layer of salt, dill, mushrooms on top of it. Alternate layers until the pan is full. Put oppression on top of a wooden circle. The circle should be of such a size that it could freely enter the pan, but at the same time all the mushrooms were under oppression. The chanterelles will be salted in about a month. This is the longest way, but also the most popular.
"Semi-cold" method
This method is much faster than the previous one. Sort the chanterelles, peel and rinse. Scald them with boiling water and discard them in a colander. Scald the dill too. Put a layer of mushrooms in a jar, sprinkle with salt, add some dill, then alternate layers of salt, mushrooms and dill, adding a small amount of finely grated garlic. Put oppression on top.
Hot way
For this method, in addition to chanterelles and salt, you will also need:
- peppercorns:
- Bay leaf;
- garlic;
- carnation.
Prepare the mushrooms. Pour water into a saucepan, put on fire, bring to a boil. Put the chanterelles in boiling water, add spices and cook for a quarter of an hour. Take out the mushrooms (please do not pour out the water, you have a ready-made brine), put in a glass or enamel dish, fill with brine. Cover it all with salt.
Cut the garlic into thin slices, add to the mushrooms. Place a circle and oppression on top. The brine should completely cover the mushrooms. Leave to cool at room temperature, then place on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator or in the cellar. After a day, the chanterelles can be eaten.
