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Freezing Chanterelles: This is How You Preserve the Mushrooms

If you freeze fresh chanterelles, you can keep them for a few months. In this article you will learn how this works.

Chanterelles are in season from the end of June to September: If you know what you’re doing, you can pick lots of delicious mushrooms on a walk in the forest. You’ll often find more than you can eat in one meal. You can freeze the chanterelles to keep them from going bad. With just a few moves, the mushrooms stay fresh and you can extend the chanterelle season.

Tip: Often chanterelles from the region are offered at the weekly market. Worth buying here and freezing them for fall and winter.

Freezing chanterelles: How to prepare the mushrooms

To prepare the chanterelles for freezing:

Thoroughly brush the chanterelles with a small brush.
Wash them off very gently.
Cut out bad spots with a small knife.
Blanch the chanterelles in salted water for a few minutes. This way they don’t taste bitter after defrosting.
Scoop the mushrooms out of the water with a spoon and gently dry them with a towel.
Let them dry a bit before you freeze them.

How to freeze chanterelles

You can easily freeze chanterelles in just a few steps:

Arrange the mushrooms on a board or tray.
Then place this in the freezer.
Take the board out again after about half an hour. Now the chanterelles are “pre-frozen” – so they won’t stick together when you freeze them afterwards.
Now fill the mushrooms in a freezer container and store them in the freezer.
Tip: Don’t use plastic bags to freeze the chanterelles. Instead, you can use, for example, freezer-proof glasses, cans or cotton bags.

Mushrooms that you collect yourself can stay in the freezer for up to ten months and still taste good. Mushrooms from the supermarket, on the other hand, lose their taste more quickly.

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Cooking Tips

Clean Chanterelles: the Best Tips for Cleaning

You should clean chanterelles very carefully, as the mushrooms are sensitive. We show you the best tips on how to clean chanterelles properly.

If you walk through the forest in summer, with a bit of luck you will come across the first chanterelles. Their bright yellow is hard to miss. If you have a cloth bag with you – plastic is not only bad for the environment, but also bad for the mushrooms – you can carefully cut off a few of the tasty mushrooms just above the ground with a sharp knife.

Freshly picked chanterelles are very aromatic, but of course they are not as clean as the pre-cleaned ones from the shop around the corner. How do you get rid of the “dirt”?

Clean your chanterelles properly with these tips

Remove coarse dirt: Even collected chanterelles have to be cleaned thoroughly because needles, soil and other dirt stick to them. Since a water bath is taboo and chanterelles are very sensitive, you can brush off the dirt with a kitchen brush (available from **Avocadostore) or kitchen paper (e.g. made from fast-growing bamboo from **Avocadostore).
Cut off the stalk: Whether the chanterelles are from the forest or the supermarket, you first need to remove the bottom part of the stalk.
Remove bad spots: If you discover soft, dry or glassy spots when cutting off the stem ends, you should also cut them off with a sharp knife.
Now the chanterelles are clean and ready to be cleaned and you can use them to make sauces, soups and stir-fries.

Clean especially dirty chanterelles

Water bath: If the dirt is particularly bad and cannot be removed with a brush and kitchen roll, you can use water: place the mushrooms in a sieve and dip them briefly in a cold water bath. Then place them on a clean kitchen towel that will soak up the excess water.
Flour bath: Dust the mushrooms with flour and then briefly dip them into a cold water bath using a sieve. The flour separates from the chanterelles and takes the adhering dirt with it. This method works especially well with larger batches, when it would take too long to hand-clean all the mushrooms.
Danger! In Europe, chanterelles may only be collected for personal use, since their stock is constantly shrinking. Collecting is generally prohibited in nature reserves and national parks. Check with your local municipality before collecting chanterelles.

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Instructions for Cleaning and Trimming Chanterelles

The yellow, tasty chanterelles or chanterelles usually have to be cleaned beforehand before they can be prepared. cleaning or washing? How to properly clean chanterelles? We have put together helpful, proven tips for you on how this work can be made easier for you.

Properly cleaning chanterelles is easy when you consider the nature and texture of the delicious mushrooms. Because they are delicate, care must be taken. In addition, you can make sure to cut off the stems when collecting them in the forest so that as little dirt as possible gets into the basket.

Pre-cleaning of chanterelles in the forest

Chef and cook can save themselves a lot of work if the mushroom picker leaves the soil, needles, and leaves in the forest and not in the basket. It is even better to sparingly cut off the earthy stalk of the chanterelle when collecting it and scrape off the earth a little. In this way, the final cleaning of the mushroom harvest is just a snap for the housewife (and the househusband) and the further processing of the mushrooms, such as freezing the mushrooms or preparing delicious mushroom dishes, can begin.

Dry mushrooms are better than wet ones

It is very important and helpful to let the mushrooms dry a little. If they were picked after a rain in the forest, they are much dirtier than during a dry period and unfortunately, the dirt cannot be removed as well. If you lay them out on absorbent kitchen paper at home, the chanterelles can dry well. Don’t worry, they won’t lose any of their taste or their firmness!

The cleaning of chanterelles

In order to be able to enjoy your mushrooms later, you need to remove dirt and dirt from them. It is best to use a mushroom brush or a kitchen brush. You clean each mushroom individually by hand. This work can also be done carefully with a kitchen towel if you don’t have a brush at hand. Very sparingly cut off the dry or muddy areas, as well as the stalk, with a kitchen knife. Now the chanterelles are ready for further processing.

Clean or wash chanterelles?

You should definitely clean the chanterelles, and do it by hand. When washing, the delicious mushrooms would unfortunately quickly soak up water and become mushy. Furthermore, the chanterelles also lose their delicious aroma easily. Accordingly, you need to clean chanterelles properly, which means that you should take a little time to do it. However, there is a trick if you want or need to do it faster. It’s the flour trick.

The flour trick for washing mushrooms

If you’re in a hurry, you can use the flour trick. All you need is a small amount of regular flour, a plastic bag, and a sieve. Place the mushrooms in a colander and sprinkle flour over them. Then rub the mushrooms with your hands so that the flour can bind the dirt as a household remedy. Now wash the floury chanterelles briefly under the tap. Dry the chanterelles carefully with paper towels.

Freeze chanterelles properly

The chanterelle keeps fresh for a few days when cleaned and properly stored in the refrigerator at below 7°C. The mushroom can also be frozen well, provided it is very fresh and you proceed as follows: Cut the cleaned mushrooms in half lengthwise and check whether they have been eaten by maggots or worms. Now cut the mushrooms into bite-sized pieces. Then blanch them by putting them in boiling salted water for a minute. Then shock them with ice water and pat them dry. Now freeze them immediately.

The atmosphere of mushroom pickers

Many mushroom pickers swear by cleaning the chanterelles together in a relaxed atmosphere. Placed around a table, preferably outside on the terrace, with a beer or a glass of wine and a nice chat, work becomes a pleasure and seems to be done twice as quickly.
We wish all mushroom pickers and chanterelle cooks a successful season! Incidentally, the real chanterelle is called Eierschwammerl in Austria.

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