Spring in the middle lane is the time to start the quiet hunting season, especially if the forest is damp and cool. Connoisseurs seek out the edible gifts of the forest where the novice walks by. It is important for a novice mushroom picker to know which mushrooms are harvested in spring. It is enough to study 2-4 of the most popular species for the search to be crowned with success.
Morels
When answering the question, what mushrooms are harvested in spring, morels are first of all remembered. Their wrinkled brown caps, always hollow, on brittle legs, often appear on the slopes of ravines, among aspens. They can appear both under a bush and under a tree, on humus-fertilized soil or on sandy forest paths. The most popular spring morel mushrooms delight with their rich taste and unique forest aroma.
Rinse the mushrooms, chop and cook in boiling water for half an hour. Drain the liquid through a colander, cut the morels into rings. Fry in a cast-iron skillet in vegetable or butter, add salt and sour cream to taste. Simmer for half an hour over low heat, covered. Alternatively, hold in a well-preheated oven for 15 minutes.
Morel hats
Lovers of mushroom picking in spring at the same time as morels can find morel caps related to them. They can take a fancy to lowlands, places not far from dry pits and grooves, aspen and birch forests. The "headdress" of spring mushrooms is light brown, small in size, while the stem is rather long - sometimes more than 10 cm long. Some specimens have wrinkled caps, others have smooth conical caps.
Can be cooked along with morels, the taste and aroma of those and other gifts of the forest are the same. A very satisfying dish - spring mushrooms, morel caps and morels after preliminary boiling, fried in a skillet with eggs. First, the mushrooms should be fried with a chopped onion in oil for 10 minutes, then mixed with a couple of beaten eggs and add salt, pepper, or sour cream to taste. Fry with stirring for another 10-15 minutes.
Stitching
The conditionally edible spring mushroom line with its wrinkled cap resembles an edible morel, but there are differences. His cap is colored in a more intense, red-brown color, not conical, but shapeless. The lines are especially fond of pine plantings; they grow in places where boletus is found in summer.
Scientists have found that the line contains gyromitrin toxins, which are deadly to humans. In addition, the pulp of the mushroom has a characteristic iodine flavor and not everyone likes such food. The opinions of experts are divided about the use of lines in food. Some believe that the poison of mushrooms does not decompose from cooking, others - that the lines can be eaten after soaking and boiling for an hour, or after drying.
The safest way to prepare stitches is natural drying within six months. Then the mushrooms should be kept overnight in water or milk to swell, drain the liquid after soaking and rinse. Cut the lines, after which you can use them for cooking mushroom cabbage soup.
Pour a handful of mushrooms with hot water, boil, add table salt to taste and keep the pan on fire for 40-50 minutes. After that, you can add other ingredients to the cabbage soup. Put successively in the broth: potatoes; sauteed carrots and onions; shredded cabbage; spices and spices to taste. Cook everything until tender.
Oyster mushrooms
Oyster mushrooms are known for their unpretentiousness, it is no coincidence that they are grown on an industrial scale along with champignons and are even cultivated in private farmsteads. Usually, mushroom pickers harvest oyster mushrooms in autumn, but in cold spring, individual specimens can be found in May and even early June. Multi-colored caps (whitish, grayish, tan, purple) appear on living wood and thrive well on dead wood.
Fragrant and juicy mushrooms, when properly prepared, can become a real delicacy. Cooking oyster mushrooms is simple, since they do not need preliminary boiling, soaking, or drying. It is enough to clean the raw materials from debris, rinse and cut into pieces - and you can fry.
Heat the frying pan, add a little vegetable oil and fry the chopped onions (pickled). Put oyster mushrooms, fry with stirring for 15-20 minutes.
Scaly polypore
Going to collect mushrooms in the spring in a mixed deciduous forest, you can probably find tinder fungus on the trunks and stumps. These gifts of the forest are extremely common in the middle lane, however, they can only be collected for food when young, tender, crumbling in hands, with a cap up to 10 cm in diameter. Then the mushrooms will delight with taste that is not inferior to oyster mushrooms.
Scaly tinder fungus especially loves to grow on maples and ash trees, located low above the soil. Initially, the fungus resembles a bud, then its fleshy cap grows. The "headdress", as the name suggests, is covered with scales, its smell is pleasant, fresh, reminiscent of flour, wood and cucumbers at the same time.
Boil the washed and peeled young polypores, cut into slices, in salted water for 1 hour. Drain and cool mushrooms. Mix with sour cream and chopped herbs, onions, add salt to taste and sprinkle with citric acid. Serve tinder fungus salad with vegetables.
Sarcoscifa cinnabar red
Now you know which mushrooms are harvested in spring. The most popular types in the middle lane are described here. It is recommended to pay special attention to morels and morels, oyster mushrooms. If you're lucky, a fragrant harvest will allow you to cook a hearty heat and even make supplies for the winter.
Attentive mushroom pickers may stumble upon lesser-known mushrooms that can also be eaten. Among them is the cinnabar-red spring mushroom of the Sarcoscith. Already in April, these very beautiful red mushrooms appear in the forest with the edges of their caps raised upward, because of which these gifts of the forest are called in another way scarlet or elven bowls. Sarkosphires delight with the beauty of bright placers formed on rotten trees in moist soil.
It is known that even in antiquity, people prepared a hemostatic from sarcoscifa powder. But should we eat it? Mushrooms are conditionally edible, although they have low nutritional value due to their small, slender fruit bodies. Some gourmets boil scarlet bowls for 20 minutes, after which they are fried with sour cream or used in a salad with onions and vegetable oil.
Even if a novice mushroom picker does not dare to try sarcoscifa, meeting her is a good sign. It was noticed that it does not grow near industrial zones and highways, which means that it is an excellent ecological indicator. In the area where scarlet bowls appear, you can safely pick spring mushrooms.
The main rules of a novice mushroom picker:
- you don't know what kind of mushroom - don't take it;
- in doubt - consult an expert;
- not sure whether to boil before cooking - it is better to boil;
- undertake a quiet hunt only in an ecologically clean area;
- process and cook the harvested mushrooms right away!
