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Curious if you can store mushrooms in your pantry? Well, the truth is yes you can store mushrooms in your pantry but they cannot be Raw. Raw mushrooms must have refrigeration and some sort of moisture absorption. The best way of acquiring that would be a brown paper bag sealed well at the top.
If you wish to store your mushrooms in the pantry they need to be dehydrated first. The pantry is an ideal storage place the store your dehydrated mushrooms because it’s dark, cool, and dry.
When all you have is fresh mushrooms there are alternatives to Pantry storage, let’s get into them.
How to freeze your mushrooms
Freezing is the ideal way to store mushrooms long-term if they’re fresh. You will need to blanch them to stop the enzymes from breaking down the mushroom as it’s freezing. This will also increase the texture, quality, and usability of your Frozen mushroom once thawed.
The Best tip we’ve ever gotten for freezing mushrooms is once blanched, lay them out on a cookie tray individually so they are not touching each other, and freeze them that way.
Once they’re frozen you may add them to a freezer bag and seal it tight.
By doing this, the mushrooms will no longer stick to each other in the freezer. You will be able to take out handfuls at a time rather than a giant block of mushroom. This gives you more control if you only need to cook a few at a time, rather than trying to chisel off and damage your frozen mushrooms.
That’s not the only way to store mushrooms and we should get back to the pantry question a hand.
How do you dehydrate mushrooms so you can store them in the pantry?
Freezer space is a premium and we all know that. We’ve got so much crap in our freezers that we don’t always have room for things like fresh mushrooms.
Besides, who wants to go through all that fuss of removing our old meat from the back of the freezer?
But you know what’s usually not full? Our pantries. The most ideal place to store mushrooms that have been dehydrated is in the pantry.
Some people might get the impression it’s hard to dehydrate mushrooms. But actually, it’s not at all. There are two ways to do it.
If you don’t have a dehydrator you CAN use an oven to dry out your mushrooms.
- Give your mushrooms a good wash, this is very important.
- Slice your mushrooms very thin. mushrooms contain a lot of moisture and will need to be thin in order to dry them out properly.
- Switch your oven to as low a heat as possible. If the oven can only go over a hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit, be sure to leave the oven door open a crack so as not to cook or burn the mushrooms.
- You have to flip and turn the mushrooms once in a while to make sure they do not burn and they dehydrate properly. The heat will not penetrate the bottom of the mushroom if it is not turned around and flipped.
While this isn’t the fastest way to dehydrate your mushrooms, it is an effective means of doing so if you do not have a dehydrator.
Dehydrator instructions
Dehydrator instructions are very similar to The Oven instructions other than the placement. What I call the tray dance. Depending on the type of dehydrator you have will be slightly different.
If you have a dehydrator that dries from the bottom up, you will need to rearrange your racks from top to bottom. Much like the oven method, If you stack your trays you will need to make sure the heat is distributed evenly.
If you have a dehydrator that warms up on both ends of the machine then this is not a concern.
Set the dehydrator to 115 degrees Fahrenheit, and allow 3 to 4 hours until they’re nice and crispy. you can go higher in the temperature if you want a quicker dry, but you were risking burning and or cooking your mushrooms.
You can also go lower if you wish but for every few degrees lower you should add an equal amount of time dehydrating.
Be sure to check on them often as a dehydrated mushroom and a normal fresh mushroom look almost identical except one’s a little more shriveled and crispy. Color-wise not much will change and it is hard to determine its dryness factor by looks alone.
When you bend the dehydrated mushroom it should snap cleanly in half. that tells you it’s dry. However, you should wait till they cool down first before trying to determine how dry they are as warm food tends to feel drier than it is. Warm mushrooms will also cause them to be more rubber-like and less Snappy and crisp.
Once your mushrooms are dehydrated, all that’s left to do is add them to a glass jar. A mason jar or Ball jar will do. You can also use a FoodSaver bag or any other airtight container you have.
We definitely recommend glass for its durability and its airtight qualities. Glass also provides the ability to see if your mushrooms have gained any mold and they are still edible.
After that, it’s a matter of placing them in the pantry and forgetting they exist. Your mushrooms will last for a significant amount of time when dried properly. You shouldn’t have any concerns about them going bad anytime soon. But, you should consider inspecting them every month or so to check if there’s any mold growth. It will be very obvious if that happens.
If your mushrooms do have more growth dispose of them immediately as they are no longer safe for consumption.
