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Anyone who has picked mushrooms at least once knows that each specimen may turn out to be wormy. There is nothing unusual about this. Fruiting bodies provide nutritious food for many insects, more precisely for their larvae. Worms in porcini mushrooms (or boletus mushrooms) are perhaps the most unpleasant “surprise” for lovers of quiet hunting. However, there are ways that can help solve this problem.
Can a porcini mushroom be wormy?
According to research by mycologists, almost all representatives of the forest kingdom that are edible (including porcini mushrooms) can potentially be worm-bearing. Even the toxins they contain, which can cause serious poisoning to the human body, are harmless to insects.
Why are porcini mushrooms wormy?
As soon as the fruiting bodies emerge from the ground, they are immediately attacked by fungus gnats or sciara flies.These are small insects, up to 0.5 mm in size, living in large numbers in forests.
Adult specimens do not cause any harm to the fruiting bodies, since they have a sucking mouthparts that are not adapted for consuming rough food, which is the pulp of legs or caps. But their larvae, emerging from eggs after a few days, have such a structure of the oral cavity that they are able to feed on mushroom pulp.
Worms are significantly larger than adult insects (their size is about 8-10 mm) and have a very high rate of food consumption. In just 3-4 hours, several specimens can completely ruin a high-quality young boletus.
Worms eat porcini mushrooms with pleasure, since they contain the highest concentration of protein. In boletus mushrooms it can reach up to 30%. In addition, it is their fruiting bodies that contain sufficient amounts of carbohydrates, amino acids, fiber and essential oils. All this makes boletus one of the most attractive to worms.
Roughly speaking, of the entire mushroom kingdom, boletus mushrooms are the most delicious for worms. In addition, they are loved not only by insect larvae, but also by other animals, mainly rodents and birds. For example, squirrels most often prepare their winter supplies primarily from them.
For mushrooms, the presence of worms is not evil. On the contrary, thanks to the larvae, their reproduction occurs. By eating the fruiting body, they contribute to the faster spread of spores. By eating the flesh of the cap, the worms “shake out” the spores from the hymenophore.
How to identify a wormy porcini mushroom
Determining whether a boletus is wormy or not is quite simple. You just need to look at its cut location.The presence of parasites will be indicated by numerous round holes, pits and passages, which are clearly visible on the cut.
Depending on the number of holes, irregularities, passages, etc., the degree of damage to the boletus by worms is determined. If it is replete with a large number of holes and “burrows”, it is left in the forest. Typically, older fruiting bodies are too wormy, although there are exceptions.
In dry and sunny weather, fungus flies and mosquitoes are more active and lay many eggs. On the contrary, if the weather is cloudy and rainy, the number of worm-bearing boletuses is significantly less.
What to do with a wormy mushroom
The following options are possible:
- When only the cut site is damaged, you can try to remove part of the leg. Often insects begin the process of “eating” the mushroom from the bottom up. It is quite possible that by removing part of the stem, it will be possible to get to the place where the worms have not yet penetrated.
- Sometimes part of the cap may be damaged because insects may have entered the fruiting body from above. In this case, the damaged part is simply cut out and the rest is sent to the trash.
- If there are many affected areas, but they are small, you can also take the trophy with you and treat it at home, getting rid of the parasites inside.
- If the worm infestation is too extensive, then it is best not to take it with you, but to leave it in the forest. In this case, it is not necessary to throw away the fruiting body; you can string it on a branch so that squirrels can use it.
Is it possible to eat wormy porcini mushrooms?
The presence of worms in porcini mushrooms does not make them poisonous. Their fruiting bodies can be eaten if properly processed beforehand.At the same time, you need to understand that you will have to remove not only the larvae themselves from the fungus, but also their waste products.
These procedures require the presence of a liquid, for example, water, which could penetrate all the pores made by the worms and wash out all the excess components contained in it from the fruiting body. Considering the small size of the passages made by the worms, we can talk about a fairly long exposure to the liquid used to clean the mushrooms. That is, the process of removing worms and the consequences of their activities will not be quick.
Is it possible to dry wormy porcini mushrooms?
Drying porcini mushrooms leads to a decrease in the amount of moisture in them, which significantly impairs the attractiveness of the fruiting body for larvae. If a person, when eating dried mushrooms, can take as much water as he wants from outside in order to return the fruiting bodies to their softness, then insect larvae simply have nowhere to take this water.
Consequently, dried boletus becomes inedible for the worms, and they try to leave them. Therefore, drying is used as one of the ways to remove worms.
How to remove worms from porcini mushrooms
To get rid of unwanted “guests” in boletus mushrooms, you do not need to make significant efforts. It is enough to carry out a relatively simple treatment to get rid of worms in porcini mushrooms. There are two main ways you can do this.
The first method is to treat wormy porcini mushrooms with salt water. To implement it, you need to cut the fruit into large pieces (2-3 cm thick) and simply pour it with a solution of salt water. The salt concentration is 1-2 tbsp. l. for 1 liter of water.
It takes 2-3 hours to soak porcini mushrooms from worms.After this procedure is completed, all insect larvae leave the fruiting body and float to the surface. Moreover, such a concentration of salt can kill them. The cut fruiting bodies are removed from the container, and the solution itself is drained.
After the porcini mushrooms are removed from the saline solution, they are washed, slightly dried and prepared in any way: boiled, fried, pickled, salted, etc.
The second way you can get rid of worms is the most common drying. Literally 2-3 days after its start, the fruiting bodies will wilt slightly, and the insect larvae will leave them on their own, since the environment for their existence will no longer be so nutritious. Dried boletus mushrooms will simply need to be rinsed thoroughly before using them.
Conclusion
Worms in porcini mushrooms are common and should not be treated as a serious problem. We can say that this is a normal state for this species, since the taste of boletus mushrooms is very attractive to insect larvae. It is relatively easy to expel worms from porcini mushrooms - just soak the fruiting bodies in a saline solution for 2-3 hours or simply dry them.
Well well! Apparently the author of the article has never cooked mushrooms in his life. Worms in salt water do not float, but sink to the bottom!