Before cooking maitake, carefully sort out, cut through the folds, clean from the earth, sand, leaves and rinse well. Boil mushrooms for 8 minutes in salted water.
How to cook maitake
You will need – maitake, water, salt
1. Before cooking maitake, sort it out, since only young light-colored mushrooms of small sizes should be cooked.
2. Thoroughly clean the mushrooms, rinse from the ground and leaves under running water, cut large ones.
3. Put the maitake in a saucepan, pour water, the volume of mushrooms should be half the amount of water poured.
4. Until boiling, keep a moderate fire, then remove the foam and reduce the fire.
5. Salt, put bay leaf, black and / or allspice peas to taste.
6. Boil maitake for 8 minutes from the moment of boiling.
7. Put the maitake in a colander, drain the water and use the boiled mushrooms as directed.
Tasty Facts
– Maitake mushroom is also known as dancing mushroom, ram mushroom and curly griffon.
– The poetic name “maitake” indicates the similarity of the mushroom with a fluttering butterfly (mai – dance, take – mushroom), and the prosaic mushroom-ram – the similarity of the wavy structure with sheep’s wool.
– It is called a dancing mushroom, because, according to ancient custom, the one who found it was obliged to dance – either out of happiness (for the mushroom they gave its weight in silver), or to perform the ritual (so as not to violate the healing properties).
– The mushroom grows from the second half of August to the end of September, not annually, it is found in deciduous forests, most often in oaks.
– Caloric content of maitake mushrooms – 30 kcal / 100 grams.
– It is recommended to collect young, light mushrooms for food . The darkened ones are also edible, but worse in taste.
– To collect maitake mushrooms correctly, you should carefully cut them from a tree or the ground with a sharp large knife – in this case, the mycelium will not be damaged, and the maitake will continue to grow.
– Fresh maitake are stored in the refrigerator for no more than two days, dried – in a hermetically sealed jar of glass. You can also freeze them in the freezer.
– One of the largest maitake mushrooms (a mushroom of 250 caps with legs) was found in 2017 in the Perm Territory – its weight was 2.5 kilograms.