Freezing chanterelles

Thanks nancy essig and everyone else for the chanterelle advice. Freezing a bunch with your recommendations, and I plan to can a few jars as well. Then I'll head back out to forage for more!

I agree. Lem, when you mentioned you are working with family recipes, that caught my eye as well.

That sounds sensible, I'm also very sceptic about any kind of intensive mass farming, especially when it is animals.
I am from Germany so my grandparents experienced hunger, food shortages and rationing during and after the war; when the times got better, they always kept a full pantry and passed that on to my parents. We always had a little garden with fruit trees, berries and vegetables, usually producing more than we could eat right that moment. But no food was ever to be wasted, so we shared with neighbours and friends and preserved the rest – lots of jams, compotes, pickles. And we spent the family holidays in Italy, on the countryside, where neighbours taught us how to preserve artichokes under oil, can tomato sauce, dry-cure prosciutto. I married into a family from a rural part of Austria (including small-scale farmers), most of them making their own cheese, sauerkraut, smoked sausages etc. in addition to pickles and jams. So it really comes quite naturally to my husband and me to keep some of these traditions alive – and I just really love how a jar of tomato sauce or apricot jam can bring back the flavour of summer in the middle of winter!
How about you? Where do you find your canning recipes and how did you get into the whole process? Would love to hear your stories about it.

good luck! if you find that this method makes them a little too dry for your liking, they take well to a little fat after they've reabsorbed their juices. I usually add a touch of butter and a lot of garlic right when I turn off the heat, and let the pan just cook it all together.

Ha, I had meant this as a bit of a joke, but yes, maybe it is all about what we get used to over generations… a question of evolution :)
Sorry, I don’t quite understand what you mean, “how my family puts up food”?

it makes a darn good dinner, let me tell you!

Lem, tomatoes is really the only thing I am interested in canning. I'm not a jam, compote person. So far, I have just piled them into Ziploc bags and frozen them flat. If you could see my apartment sized (read postage stamp size) freezer, you would laugh. Bags of ratatouille, Mrs. Wheelbarrow's salsa and today an addition of tomatoes. I have a huge pantry, so canned tomatoes are happening right after I hit the farmer's market.

In case this wasn't clear, when I said no fat I meant no fat and no oil.

I should have guessed you were in Europe. Canning recommendations are much more conservative in the US.

I like your method. The oven method that is frowned upon in the states does not have you watch for the bubbles and then proceed. Yours sounds much safer. One more question..you also use the brine technique with tomatoes?

Yes, I read that; isn't raw milk banned there, too? Maybe our European stomachs are better equipped to deal with bacteria ;)
I believe the bubbles are an indicator for the jar content reaching the right temperature, which is otherwise much harder to control in an oven compared to when they're completely submerged into water boiling in a pot.
Sweet cherry tomatoes in brine are wonderful (e.g. as a pizza topping or even in salads), just remember to prick them with a (sterile) needle a couple of times and not to cover them all the way with brine, since they release some of their own juices. We even make super lazy "unpeeled pelati" in a similar way, packing plum tomatoes halves into jars (as many as you can possibly fit), sprinkling a teaspoon or so of salt on top (plus basil, rosemary, or garlic), and canning without any additional brine …

I tend to be braver than a lot of peoole. I keep my pretty eggs from pastured eggs in a bowl on my counter, I drink raw milk that comes from a very reputable farmer who pastures all of his happy and healthy animals. I would not recommend these behaviors to anyone else, but I think most of these rules came about because of feedlot cattle and caged and crowded chickens. Canning may be another thing though..I'll have to think about it, but I certainly like the idea of the oven method.

So glad I could help! I'm sure it works great for shitakes as well. Since I don't have a lot of freezer space, I use this method for all kinds of vegetables (cherry tomatoes, green beans …) and always love the outcome.

Lem monade, does canning things this way cause them to be salty? I have access to a lot of wonderful tomatoes, but am still weighing my options. Going to google oven waterbath method. Sounds interesting.

I forgot: one can certainly add some aromatics to the brine, e.g a sprig of thyme, a garlic clove, some black peppercorns. But the pure version is pretty perfect already.

Do you also drain off the water before freezing or do you freeze them in their broth?

I forgot to say cut the woody stems off if there are any. Also, don't toss the liquid. Yummy mushroom stock.

Thank you. So good to know that this has worked as I don't want to mess up my precious cache! I know this works for morels, and I actually freeze them in snack-sized baggies in their poaching broth, but was not sure about the delicate chanterelle.

The friend who freezes them in muffin tins tried freezing some in the broth and she said those lost more of their structure. I think it's best to freeze them separately, but maybe someone else has had luck with freezing them together.