The highlight of our week was going mushroom hunting with our friends Beth and Kerry Olson of B & K Natural Farm (pastured poultry). They’ve been avid mushroom hunters for 30 years, and we were honored and blessed to be invited along on one of their cherished days in the woods hunting for wild edibles.
We spent the whole day yesterday in the Umpqua Forest hunting for chanterelles. It was a wonderful day! It actually was supposed to rain, but we woke up to a rain-free weather forecast. And no rain surprised us, so we were happy about that. 🙂
Chanterelles are a premium wild mushroom with wonderful flavor that sell around here for $15 per pound. More info on chanterelles (where they grow, their season, identification, and flavor) is here.
After a full and wonderful day hunting mushrooms and hiking, we were pretty tired when we got home. But those mushrooms were perishable, and my fridge couldn’t fit hardly any of our haul, so we had no choice but to clean and process them. Thankfully, we had cleaned the majority of the mushrooms in the field (as Beth and Kerry taught us). This made the job much easier, though still long.
How To Freeze Wild Mushrooms
Spend a little time now, for easy-to-use mushrooms later.
Instructions
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Sitting at the table, each of us with a cutting board and knife, we proceeded to clean any remaining debris and dice up 5 big paper shopping bags' full of mushrooms.
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Then I sauteed big pot-fulls in a generous amount of butter and a sprinkle of Celtic sea salt.
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I didn't overcook, just enough to bring out the flavor but leave the mushrooms with some texture.
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We ended up with 2 bowls like this, full of sauteed mushrooms.
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I used a generous amount of them with pre-cooked chicken in a sauce for dinner, and we ate some plain.
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These mushrooms are soooo good! My son C., who previously hated mushrooms, loved them.
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After they'd cooled, I scooped them into quart-size freezer bags.
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I put 2 cups of sauteed mushrooms in each bag, a decent amount for a soup, pizza topping, or pasta sauce.
Recipe Notes
12 bags (totaling 24 cups of diced, sauteed mushrooms) went into the freezer, taking up surprisingly little space. This will be wonderful during the winter for many dishes.
I’m ready to go mushrooming again! My freezer needs more. 🙂
...without giving up the foods you love or spending all day in the kitchen!
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Thanks for the reminder. I need to give my friend a call and see if they are going chanterelle harvesting soon. My friend did basically the same thing last fall. She said she had to get enough in the freezer to last a year because she’s never going back regular store bought mushrooms again (and chanterelles are too expensive in the stores!)