How to remove bitterness from milk mushrooms: after salting and cooking, ways to remove bitterness without soaking

Content

1 Why do milk mushrooms taste bitter?
2 What to do to prevent milk mushrooms from becoming bitter
3 How to remove bitterness from milk mushrooms without soaking
4 Useful tips
5 Conclusion

You can remove bitterness from milk mushrooms not only by soaking, but also in other ways. First of all, you should understand what is the reason for the bitter taste of mushrooms, and then it will become clear how to remove the unpleasant bitterness.

Why do milk mushrooms taste bitter?

Milk mushrooms are classified as edible or conditionally edible mushrooms. They are used in salting and pickling, added to boiled soups and even fried. But this particular mushroom species is characterized by a characteristic unpleasant feature - raw milk mushrooms are bitter, and often the unpleasant taste persists even after processing.

The reason is that the raw pulp contains a large amount of milky juice. It not only gives the mushrooms a bitter taste, but also causes the light mushroom pulp to darken at the break, sometimes even after processing. While the milky juice saturates the pulp of the fruiting body, it will be bitter.

That is why milk mushrooms belong to the category of mushrooms that require careful and lengthy processing during preparation. There are no toxic compounds in their composition, but if you neglect preparation, the finished dish will turn out to be tasteless, since there will be too much bitterness left in it.

It is interesting that sometimes, even after processing, the fruiting bodies continue to taste bitter - this means that the algorithm was broken and the milky juice could not be completely removed. It is customary to wash bitter pickles with water, and if an unpleasant aftertaste is felt in boiled or fried mushrooms, all that remains is to add more spices and seasonings to the finished dish.

The bitter taste in mushroom bodies is due to the presence of milky juice

Important! Due to their bitter taste, milk mushrooms have long been considered inedible in European countries. Even now they are mainly salted or pickled, but are rarely used as part of hot dishes.

What to do to prevent milk mushrooms from becoming bitter

There are proven methods to remove unpleasant bitterness from the pulp. First of all, immediately after picking, the mushrooms must be thoroughly cleaned of dirt - shake off forest debris and remaining soil, remove rotten areas and trim the lower part of the legs.

Before processing, the mushroom catch must be washed in cold water several times in a row.

The classic way to remove bitterness from raw milk mushrooms is soaking. It takes a lot of time, but almost always gives results - the milk mushrooms become pleasant to the taste and also retain the light color of the flesh.
To soak milk mushrooms from bitterness, you need to keep them in water for 2-3 days; in less time, the milky juice will not have time to leave the mushroom pulp.
The water needs to be changed regularly, it is advisable to do this 3-4 times a day so that it does not stagnate and sour. If you soak the fruiting bodies in the same liquid, then there will be no benefit from this - in fact, the caps will remain lying in their own milky juice, and the bad taste will not go away.When changing the water, lightly press the fruiting bodies in the container, draining the liquid completely, and then fill it with a fresh portion of water.
Mushroom pickers often find that when soaking, mushroom caps float to the surface of the water and the liquid does not completely cover them. It is necessary to fight this; in this case, the caps are pressed down from above with heavy oppression. If the water does not cover them completely, then it will not be possible to remove the bitterness, since the milky juice will remain in the part of the pulp that is not in contact with water.

Determining that the product is ready for further processing is very simple - you need to lightly lick the mushroom on the cut. If the bitterness is no longer felt, it means that the milky juice has been removed and the mushrooms are suitable for cold or hot cooking.

Long soaking removes the bitter taste completely

Another way to remove bitterness from milk mushrooms is boiling. Fresh peeled mushrooms are placed in a pan of salted water and boiled for 10 minutes, then change the water and repeat the process. After boiling, the fruiting bodies must be placed in a colander for at least half an hour to allow the liquid to drain completely.

Attention! Boiling allows you to remove bitterness from raw fruiting bodies no less effectively than soaking. However, it is not customary to cook mushrooms before marinating and salting, so it is reasonable to remove the bitterness from milk mushrooms during cooking if the fruiting bodies are subsequently placed in a frying pan or in soup.

Sometimes you may find that milk mushrooms taste bitter after salting. This means that at one of the processing stages the technology was broken, and the milky juice still did not completely leave the mushroom pulp.

You don’t have to throw away bitter pickles right away; you can try to save the mushrooms and remove the bitterness from them:

If pickled mushroom caps are bitter, then the easiest way to remove the unpleasant taste is to simply rinse the pickles thoroughly under cold water, and then season with sour cream and spices. According to gourmet reviews, the remaining bitterness in this case goes away.
If the fruiting bodies are very bitter, you can drain the brine and keep the mushrooms in cold water for 1-2 days, and then pickle them again, this time adding more salt.

In both cases, you will have to make some effort to remove the bitterness. However, this will help you not to be left completely without salted mushrooms.

Pickles with unpleasant bitterness can simply be washed

How to remove bitterness from milk mushrooms without soaking

Soaking bitter milk mushrooms in water effectively helps remove the bad taste, but is a rather lengthy task. Many would like to somehow speed up the process and remove the bitterness from the mushroom pulp in a couple of hours.

Unfortunately, this cannot be done without any processing at all. The bitter taste depends on the presence of milky juice in the pulp, and the juice can only be removed with water.

But it is possible to remove the bitterness from white milk mushrooms without soaking for several days; an alternative is to quickly boil the fruiting bodies in salted water:

During cooking, the milky juice leaves the mushroom pulp in the same way, only it can be removed faster than when soaking.
To effectively remove the bitter taste, you need to boil the mushroom bodies with salt for 10 minutes, then drain the water and replace it with fresh water, and then put the mushrooms back on the stove for the same time.
In total, the procedure is repeated 3 times, each time changing the water in the pan and not forgetting to salt it. When following the rules, the fruiting bodies lose their unpleasant taste and at the same time retain the white color of the pulp.
When cooking, you must ensure that the water completely covers the fruiting bodies. If the caps protrude above the water, the bitterness may persist, since the processing will not affect the entire surface of the mushrooms.

The only drawback of this method is that boiled milk mushrooms are subsequently only suitable for frying, adding to soup or stewing. It is not customary to salt or pickle them, since boiled fruit bodies lose their pleasant elasticity and crispness.

Cooking eliminates unpleasant taste no less effectively

Important! To be safe, some mushroom pickers boil milk mushrooms three times for 30 minutes or more.

Practice shows that there is usually no need for boiling - it is possible to make milk mushrooms non-bitter much faster, and with prolonged heat treatment the fruiting bodies become too boiled.

Useful tips

Several useful recommendations will help remove bitterness from mushroom pulp faster and more reliably:

It is best to collect young mushroom bodies in the forest; their pulp contains less milky juice. Overripe fruiting bodies always taste more bitter, and besides, older specimens, by definition, contain more harmful substances collected by the fungus from the soil and air.
Experienced mushroom pickers advise going for milk mushrooms on cloudy days after rain. Fruit bodies collected in damp weather are less bitter, but those that have had time to dry in the sun lose a significant part of their moisture and are more bitter.
Yellow and white milk mushrooms are less bitter than dark varieties of the mushroom. If you don’t want to put too much effort into removing the unpleasant taste, then it is better to collect light-colored fruiting bodies.
It is recommended to soak or boil the collected mushrooms immediately upon returning from the forest.If you leave them in the air for several hours, the mushrooms will have time to darken, dry out, and the bitterness in them will only intensify, which means it will be more difficult to remove it.

Advice! If, after careful processing, a bitter taste is still felt in the taste of the mushrooms, you can muffle it with the help of spices, vegetable oil, onions and garlic. This will not make the unpleasant tint disappear, but it will almost completely cease to be felt.

You can drown out the bitter notes in mushrooms with spices

Conclusion

The best way to remove bitterness from milk mushrooms is by long soaking. But if the fruiting bodies are intended for soup or frying in a frying pan, you can get by with boiling them three times - the result will be exactly the same.