Many of you may know that I spent the majority of my winter in San Francisco. And even though I am VERY happy to have missed the cold Maryland winter, I am thrilled to be home. However, there were a few things that I LOVED about San Francisco and at the top of that list was the FARMER’S MARKETS! The Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market was particularly amazing! Can you say FRESH VEGGIES ALL WINTER!!! HEL-LO!
At that farmer’s market I fell in love with the mushroom stand from Far West Fungi. These are not like mushrooms from your local grocery store. No way. I have never tasted the likes of this quality in a mushroom. They were fresh and had a very hearty and rich flavor to them. Any dish I put these mushrooms in turned out so much tastier. So, I was disheartened to come home to Maryland to find there was no mushroom company of this caliber. As my husband lingered in San Francisco for a few weeks after I returned home he decided to make my day by shipping 2 FLATS back home to me (YES – TWO FLATS!!). This was a SUPER AWESOME surprise, however mushrooms don’t last forever and I didn’t want to waste them. Thanks to Pickle Me Too, I had seen a recipe for lactofermented mushrooms on our Freaky Friday blog carnival. So, I decided to preserve many of the mushrooms this way. And I am not disappointed that I did. They are delish!
Make a brine:
The first thing that you need to do is make a brine to add to your mushrooms. Make 4 T sea salt for 8 cups of water and mix until the salt is dissolved. Set aside.
I couldn’t tell you how many mushrooms I actually used but I filled 3 one liter jars. Maybe about 2-3 cups of sliced mushrooms for each liter?? But I packed in as much as I could because I knew they would shrink. So it may have been more. Fill jar and leave on counter for three days. Cover with a lettuce leaf to hold the mushrooms under the brine as it will want to float up. Refrigerate after three days or transfer to cod storage.
[gmc_recipe 8074]
How to use LF mushrooms:
You could always cook them, but I don’t recommend it. The best part about LF mushrooms is the probiotic benefits that are best eaten raw. Cooking will kill the good flora that your gut needs. Not only will the probiotics help repopulate your gut with good bacteria, it will also help to digest meat and egg products.
So far, I’ve topped grilled steak, hamburgers, and my morning eggs with the LF mushrooms. I bet they would be delish in a salad, but I haven’t tried that yet!
LF mushrooms after refrigeration
Grilled Steak with Lactofermented Mushrooms
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That sounds absolutely delicious Jen! It’s too bad that you haven’t found good mushrooms here. I would have thought that there would be because there’s a huge mushroom growing region just east of our town, here in PA. Maybe it’s time to learn foraging!
Ha Ha Bethany. Mushroom foraging scares me!! I did look in PA for some mushroom options, but from what I can tell they are all mushroom packing farms (mass produced for canned mushrooms and such). Maybe I am wrong and haven’t stumbled upon the right farm yet. If you hear of any place around you that doesn’t use chemical fertilizers or pesticides let me know.
hubby just loves mushrooms so maybe I should try this
I love the market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco – it’s one of my favorite things to visit there! Your mushrooms look wonderful – I had not heard of fermenting them before – what a great way to get your probiotics!
Hi Jen. Thanks for sharing this post on Friday Food Flicks. I’m featuring it in the hop tonight.
Amanda
Yea! Thanks Amanda.
[...] by Sandor Katz (and instructions for using an air lock), pickled celery at Pickle Me Too, and fermented mushrooms by Jen of Real Food Freaks who needed a solution for using two flats of mushrooms. (Don’t you [...]
Lacto-fermented mushrooms, they sound amazing and certainly worth trying. Thank you so much for sharing this with us on Natural Mothers Network’s Seasonal Celebration.
Have a great weekend!
Warmly, Rebecca x
[...] up, we have Lactofermented Mushrooms, from Real Food Freaks. I would have never, ever thought to ferment mushrooms. How creative is that? I’ll add this [...]
I love that you ferment them in a brine. I bet these mushrooms taste out of this world delicious!
[...] up, we have Lactofermented Mushrooms, from Real Food Freaks. I would have never, ever thought to ferment mushrooms. How creative is*that? I’ll add this [...]
Hi,
You can get our wonderful specialty mushrooms from a wholesaler, Coastal Sunbelt in MD! You can also buy our retail packages from Whole Foods in your area. You can also order a 2 lb. basket from our website http://www.mycopia.com Glad to see you enjoyed these delicious gifts from nature. On the other hand, who doesn’t want to come out to SF and shop Ferry Plaza!
best,
Meg
hi there, what kind of mushrooms did you ferment? I am wanting to do chagas and reishi. Any ideas? Are they safe to eat raw?
I used shitake and cremini. But I am no expert on mushrooms. The ones I used are fine to eat raw and fermented. You should do a search on the types you want to ferment just to be sure.
Could you be a little more specific? It appears that you sliced them before bringing but I don’t see anything as to how long you brined them at room temp before refrigerating and it also looks like you added other ingredients (I see something green on top in photo… herbs? garlic?)
What an excellent way to preserve the vitamin c content as well! Thanks for posting.
Bebe, the recipe disappeared. Sorry. We are having trouble with a recipe plug in that we were trying to use. My mushrooms were left whole and not cut. They look cut because they shrink up after fermenting. They are also fermented for 3 days then refrigerated or moved to cold storage.
Also, please note there is nothing other than the brine and mushrooms in the recipe. The green thing you see is just a lettuce leaf that I used on top to help keep the mushrooms submerged under the brine. They tend to want to float to the top otherwise.
Hi Jen! I love this idea! I live on a property outside Melbourne, Australia, and we harvest edible wild mushrooms every year… yum! Chanterelles and Meadow mushrooms are abundant and I’m always looking for ways to use large quantities of them that will allow us to enjoy them later in the year. I have tried drying them, but this takes a long time and doesn’t have any probiotic benefit. I’m definitely going to try this recipe next autumn (fall)! Thank you!
Good luck Emma! Fermenting them rally helped me preserve my bundle as well!