One of the simplest and at the same time convenient ways of harvesting mushrooms is freezing. If during the season the mushroom picker was lucky enough to collect a good harvest of chanterelles, spending only a few minutes laying mushrooms in the freezer, then you can cook a variety of dishes from them. Below is detailed and step-by-step how to cook a tasty and healthy soup from frozen chanterelles.
Selection and preparation of ingredients
Freezing chanterelles at home is very easy. However, in order for the mushrooms to not subsequently be bitter, before freezing, they must not only be thoroughly washed, but also soaked in cold water for several hours. In general, the presence of bitterness in noble mushrooms is most often explained by a violation of the technology for their collection.
You should never go on a “silent hunt” after a long drought: a crop harvested under such conditions will turn out to be not only tasteless, but also unsafe for health.
The fact is that the time of formation of the fruiting body of the fungus directly depends on the level of humidity. After rain, this process takes only a few hours, but in dry weather it can last for weeks, and all this time the mushroom, like a sponge, absorbs a huge amount of harmful substances from the atmosphere. At the same time, the biological feature of the chanterelle is that by its appearance it is almost impossible to determine whether this specimen is old or young. Having reached the required size, the chanterelle just stops growing, but it does not wrinkle and does not rot.
Did you know? Mushroom pickers have long noticed that chanterelles are never worms. It turns out that in their composition there is a substance called «hinomannosa», destroying arthropod parasites at all stages of development, due to which chanterelles are widely used today for the preparation of anthelmintic preparations.
If you cannot collect and freeze the chanterelles yourself, you can try to find this useful and tasty product on sale. In retail outlets, frozen mushrooms are sold in two ways - by weight or already packaged. It is better to give preference to the first option, since in this case the goods can be carefully examined and you can choose the copies you like (packaged mushrooms are usually sold in opaque packaging, so the consumer actually gets a "pig in a poke").
Experts advise buying frozen mushrooms not whole, but already cut, but it’s permissible to rely on your own taste: chanterelles in our latitudes do not grow too large, but the whole mushroom can be much better assessed by its original appearance and quality than a chopped mixture of unknown fragments origin.
If the frozen mushrooms are a single iceball - it is better to refuse the purchase: the goods are most likely frozen repeatedly, which, according to general rules, is unacceptable.
Before preparing the soup, it is enough to defrost the prepared chanterelles on their own, just buy mushrooms, in order to avoid troubles, rinse thoroughly under running water.
Frozen Chanterelle Soup Recipe
490 minutes
parsley or celery root
1 PC.
tomatoes (small sizes)
2 pcs.
ground black pepper
1 tsp
seasoning for mushroom dishes
1 tsp
fresh greens (dill, parsley)
1 bunch
Nutritional value per 100 g:
- Remove the chanterelles from the freezer, put them in a clean dish and, not pouring water, leave to defrost at room temperature.
- Pour the chicken breast with water, cook a transparent broth (do not forget to carefully remove the foam rising after boiling water with a slotted spoon).
- While the broth is boiling, prepare vegetables: peel the onions, carrots and white root, cut into small cubes. Peel the garlic into the cloves, remove the skin and cut into thin slices. Garlic should not be crushed too much, otherwise it will completely lose its bright aroma during the roasting process.
- When the chanterelles unfreeze, carefully squeeze out the excess liquid from the mushrooms, but do not pour out, but strain and leave for subsequent addition to the broth.
- Chop the chanterelles for soup only if they are large. The structure of the mushroom should be felt in the finished dish, so when choosing the size of the fraction, you need to proceed from the fact that a piece or a whole mushroom fits easily in a spoon, but at the same time it needs to be bitten and chewed.
- Pour the tomatoes over with boiling water and peel them (you do not need to do this procedure with sun-dried tomatoes and pilates), and then cut in proportion to the size of the chopped vegetables.
- In a heavy dish with a thick bottom, heat the vegetable oil, add onions, carrots, garlic and white root and, without reducing the heat, lightly fry. Then, simmer vegetables for 5-7 minutes already over low heat.
- Add the chanterelles to the roasting, return the fire to the maximum, fry the mushrooms with constant stirring, then salt and pepper the contents of the pan, add seasoning or “mushroom cube”.
- Remove the chicken breast from the prepared broth, pour the liquid into the dishes with grilled vegetables and mushrooms. Bring to a boil, remove the resulting foam (it will be a little, but still should not be ignored, then the soup will turn out to be both beautiful and useful).
- Cut the chicken breast so that the meat and chanterelles in the soup have the same size, add the chicken to the boiling broth, leave to cook for another 15-20 minutes.
- In a separate container, warm the cream, but do not bring to a boil so that the product does not curl.
- Put tomatoes in the soup, pour in the liquid squeezed from the mushrooms and warmed cream. Wait for the boil to begin, remove the fire, cover the container with a lid and let it brew.
- When serving, garnish the soup with finely chopped fresh herbs.
Important! Fresh tomatoes are used for the summer version of the soup. In winter, it is better to take dried or pilate (tomatoes canned in their own juice).
According to the classification used in Soviet culinary textbooks, the chanterelle, along with boletus, pereberezik and breast, was customarily assigned to the four possible categories of mushrooms with the highest taste and nutritional characteristics. There are a huge number of dishes that can be prepared from this noble product, and the above recipe for a light creamy first course is just one example.
