The porcini mushroom, also known as the man's mushroom, is probably the most sought-after of all forest mushrooms. The noble mushrooms taste particularly good freshly fried in butter, but they can also be preserved well by drying and freezing. Since the boletus belongs to the mycorrhizal fungi and usually lives in a close symbiosis with spruces (but also other tree species such as beech, oak or pine), it cannot be grown in the home garden. If you want to eat porcini mushrooms, you have to look for them yourself in the forest - or if you're lucky, you can buy a bowl of fresh ones in the supermarket.
How do you properly clean fresh porcini mushrooms?
Clean porcini mushrooms by cutting away areas of food and maggots, leaving light-colored tubes, cutting off dark/greenish tubes, cleaning the mushroom with a mushroom brush, removing soil and dirt, wiping the cap with a cloth, and cutting the fruiting body lengthways and check for maggots.
Identify porcini mushrooms correctly
Congratulations! They were successful and found some beautiful porcini mushrooms and were even able to collect a whole basket. But before you proudly head home and process your find, you should take a close look at the mushrooms again: There are some species that look very similar to the porcini mushroom. Although these are not necessarily poisonous, they taste different and may also be processed differently. Caution is particularly advised with the inedible gall boletus. This differs from the porcini mushroom by the usually darker and coarser stem network and the lighter cap. If the flesh and tubes turn blue when pressed or cut, it is usually the chestnut boletus, which is also edible.
Pre-clean porcini mushrooms in the forest
So that you can safely determine the type of mushroom, you should not cut off the stems of the specimens you find, but carefully twist them out with a knife. The lower part of the stem, covered by soil, is essential for identification. If you are sure about the type of mushroom, you can roughly pre-clean it in the forest: Maggots and eaten areas are generously cut away, and you also clean the fruiting bodies of adhering soil and other plant parts such as leaves or needles. After identification, you can also cut away the lower part of the stem if it is very dirty and cannot be cleaned.
Be careful, maggots
Boletus mushrooms are not only very popular with people, they are also often eaten by snails, maggots and other creatures. Maggots are mainly found inside the mushroom, where they work their way up from the bottom. With a bit of bad luck, it can happen that a porcini mushroom that looks good on the outside is already eaten bare on the inside. For this reason, you should always cut porcini mushrooms lengthwise in the forest and generously remove any rotten insides. You should no longer take mushrooms that are badly eaten with you.
Cleaning porcini mushrooms – step by step
When you get home, the mushrooms you have collected must be cleaned and processed immediately. Forest mushrooms in particular spoil very quickly due to their very high protein and water content and should therefore not be left lying around at room temperature for a few hours. If the mushrooms cannot be used immediately, clean them thoroughly and then wrap them in a clean cloth or paper. Stored in the vegetable compartment of the refrigerator, they will last for up to two days.
And this is how you clean the sensitive mushrooms:
- If you haven't already done so, cut away feeding and maggot areas.
- Tubes that are still light can remain, but if they are already dark or even greenish - cut them away.
- Clean the entire mushroom carefully with a clean mushroom brush.
- Remove stuck-on soil and other dirt.
- You can wipe the hat with a clean cloth.
- If you haven't already done so, cut the fruit body lengthwise and check for maggots.
- Cut away any maggots.
In most cases, these cleaning measures are sufficient. Only with older specimens it may be necessary to peel both the stem and the cap.
Why should you avoid washing mushrooms?
Now cleaning the porcini mushrooms is quite tedious and time-consuming - some people want to make it easier for themselves and simply wash the fruit bodies instead of brushing them off. However, this step is only recommended for very heavily soiled specimens that cannot be cleaned sufficiently otherwise. To do this, place the cut mushrooms and check them for maggots in a sieve and rinse them thoroughly with a strong jet of water. Then dry them carefully with a dry cloth so that the mushrooms do not absorb a lot of water unnecessarily - they are not called “schwammerl” in Bavarian for nothing. Mushrooms soaked in water quickly become mushy and lose a lot of their aroma.
Tip
Caution: Porcini mushrooms available in supermarkets mostly come from Eastern Europe and may be heavily contaminated with heavy metals or radioactive substances. Since in Germany wild mushrooms can only be collected for small personal consumption and porcini mushrooms cannot be cultivated, forest mushrooms are always imported for commercial sale. This also applies to some other species, such as chanterelles.
