Hot-Salted Mushrooms in Jars for Winter

Cooking method

1. Step 1:

   

   How do you hot-salt mushrooms in jars? Prep the ingredients. Any mushrooms work, both gilled and pored. I'm using bay boletes—these gorgeous, firm mushrooms have a pleasant velvety cap in shades of ochre. They darken as they cook, but it doesn't affect the flavor. Around here, bay boletes are considered some of the tastiest mushrooms, right up there with porcini.

2. Step 2:

   

   Sort the mushrooms and rinse them well. Bay boletes take a bit of fuss, though in our pine forests they come up very clean and firm.

3. Step 3:

   

   Boil the mushrooms for at least 20 minutes in salted water. From here you can choose between two salting methods.

4. Step 4:

   

   Method one: Peel the garlic and slice it into slivers; have coarse salt and dill seeds ready. You can swap the seeds for a small dill umbel per jar.

5. Step 5:

   

   Put a little salt, dill seeds, and garlic slivers in the bottom of a clean, sterile jar. Pack the boiled, drained mushrooms in layers, sprinkling each layer with more salt and garlic (at the same ratio).

6. Step 6:

   

   Method two: Drain off the water the mushrooms cooked in and drain them in a colander. Boil a fresh brine to the recipe (2 tablespoons of salt per 250 ml of water), simmer the mushrooms in it for 5 minutes, then spoon them into jars with a little of the liquid, adding garlic and dill seeds. The brine should be no more than a quarter of the volume of the mushrooms.

7. Step 7:

   

   The remaining steps are the same for both methods. Pour a layer of sunflower oil over the surface of the mushrooms and cover with lids.

8. Step 8:

   

   Store the jars in the fridge with the lids left loose to prevent botulism. It's not safe to seal mushrooms airtight at home—I always follow this rule and advise others to as well.

9. Step 9:

   

   And that's it—your hot-salted mushrooms for winter are done. They'll be ready in about two weeks, but you can eat them right away too: lightly salted, but already delicious!