How do you guys preserve chantrelles? canning? vacpac? or just eat them all at once?

After a monster harvest yesterday I am either gonna have to eat em all or find a way to store them. advice is welcome.

Kanektok Kid - thanks for the recipe...looks pretty tasty, will try it when we get the Chanterelles

D3Smarti, I have been just freezing them in ziplocks for the moment, assume they could be vacuum packed after freezing. I will look for some idea's on canning, should work........seems like I have heard of stringing them up and hanging in the garage to dry........don't forget the huckleberries, they are thick and easy to pick this year, great on cereal and make great pies.....freeze well because of their thick skin.

Did some digging on Google and found this on Chantrelles

http://www.mssf.org/cookbook/chanterelle.html

There is a section talking about care of chantrelles and canning plus some good looking receipies.....enjoy

Hit my honey hole this weekend and there were quite a few around. Last year I froze/vacu-sealed a bunch of chantrelles and they still eat well.

Now I just need to go get some backstrap to go with.

I got some chantrelles a week or so ago, but they had been rained on. I didn't know about freezing them, so we just fixed them with dinner for four nights in a row until they were gone.

Is it my imagination, or do chantrelles shrink more than other shrooms when cooked? I put some butter in the frying pan and filled it with chantrelles and sauteed, and the pan was about 1/3 full.

Sg

Yeah, they really reduce down in size. That is why you should reduce them prior to vac-sealing. You can fit a lot of shrooms in a small space.

Steve: Only cook them in a hot dry pan. Either let the water that comes out evaporate or pour it out. If you want butter and onions with them do it after all the water comes out. And yes they lose a ton of mass.
It took me a while to learn that one but the flavor is much better if you do it that way.
I use the dehydrator on what I don't use but that is a poor substitute. Will try NWP's link and can some.
When I get a bunch I:
1 eat over meat
2 eat in salad
3 make a couple of gallons of mushroom soup and freeze in tupperware. I highly recommend this.
I don't have a recipe for the soup but...
mushrooms,heavy whipping cream,butter,bay leaf,pepper and chicken or beef stock. Add some other stuff if you have it laying around. It's really good but probably not for heart patients.

Dehydrate them in a food dryer... You can use them all year after that....

Keith

I tried the dehydrator thing one year. They ended up being really tough and chewy when I rehydrated them. I ended up rehydrating them, tossing the mushrooms and using the water they rehydrated in as vegetable broth. Really good broth for risotto. This year I have had the most luck finding my mushrooms at Ballard Market. $10 a pound is cheaper than gas to get out of Seattle.

I am just the opposite. tagged my "backstrap" saturday, just need to go pick some chantrelles.

Nice, what did ya get?

With this couple of days of no rain, the chantrelles have really popped and they're nice and dry.

Boy howdy! This year has been (and likely will continue to be) lights out for mushrooms. The quality and size of the chanterelles I found on Saturday was ridiculous. In a perhaps sad and pathetic way, finding such a wealth of beautiful mushrooms has made the lack of success on salmon a bit less discouraging.

Now, for the bad news.... I have had more than one old timer around here tell me that when the mushroom picking is really good, it's a sure sign we are in for a rough winter. I don't have a lot of experience to go on, but from what I have seen since I started picking mushrooms a few years ago, I think there may be some truth to that. Last year, the mushrooms were relatively scarce, and I spent a couple of days steelheading in February that felt like June. Conversely, the year before, the mushrooms were abundant. The winter that followed was the worst I have seen in my 11 years in Washington. I have seen a lot more mushrooms this year than I did even that year, so I am hoping my limited observations have been misleading.

I never thought about starting them in a dry pan. I figured they might burn or scorch. Plus my limited cooking repertoire only knows sauteeing as lightly frying in butter. But I will try that next time, cuz most of the butter evaporates with the water that comes out of the mushrooms. Never thought about making mushroom soup either, but that sounds like a good idea.

Wear Bright colors out there guys! Don't wan't any members getting mistakably shot for a Bear.

I used to think chicken stock came from cans. About six months ago I started making stock whenever I did a chicken or turkey. Easy and way better.
Mom was a good cook but didn't do a whole lot of "from scratch" stuff. I'm learning as I go.
I put it in jars and freeze. Seems to work good.
Next time I'm going to pressure can it.

Pickled Chanterelles are an option as well

Jason
How did they work out/taste? I'm open to that idea.

They are a hit- I think the recipe is still kicking around. It was pretty basic, I ended up not having enough shrooms. So I added a bunch of Onions from my garden, I think adding some clove garlic would be helpful.

On a side note, I recently found a nice patch of Chanterelles within walking distance of my house.

so a question from an amateur like me, is it possible to find chanterelles in a local city park or any sea-level Puget Sound woodsy area that has lots of fir trees? Most of the folks seem to be finding them in higher elevations, but can one stumble into a chanterelle patch while walking thru the woods of my local urban park?