Detailed Explanation of 8 Edible Mushroom Food Processing Technologies

Fresh edible mushrooms have a high moisture content and cannot be stored for long after harvest; they soon open their caps, deteriorate, and become moldy, reducing or even losing their commercial value. At present, most edible mushrooms are sold fresh or as dried products, with very few deep-processed products, such as canned goods, which account for only 4%. In the future, people's requirements for the quality and varieties of edible mushrooms will become increasingly higher. Carrying out deep processing of edible mushrooms and developing a series of products is currently the main way to broaden the production field and @#@136@#@ market.

I. Mushroom preserves

1. Raw material selection: Select fresh mushrooms with medium-sized caps, natural color, intact mushroom shape, and no disease or insect spots as raw materials.

2. Pretreatment: ① Brine soaking: Remove impurities from the harvested fresh mushrooms, immediately put them into 1%-2% saline water and soak for 4-6 hours to increase the firmness of the mushroom bodies. ② Blanching: Pour the cleaned and drained mushroom bodies that have been soaked in brine into boiling water and blanch for 7-9 minutes to destroy enzyme activity and prevent browning of the mushroom bodies. ③ Trimming: Trim the mushroom bodies to a uniform size. Properly cut larger mushroom bodies, and remove fragments and defective mushrooms. ④ Color protection: Soak the trimmed mushroom bodies in a 0.2% sodium metabisulfite solution for 8-10 hours, then remove and rinse clean in running water.

3. Sugar curing: Add 40% granulated sugar (calculated by the weight of fresh mushrooms) to the washed mushroom bodies and cure for 24 hours. Filter out the sugar liquid, adjust the sugar degree to 50 Baume, boil for 10 minutes, pour it hot into a vat, and continue curing for 24 hours.

4. Sugar boiling: Pour the mushroom bodies together with the sugar liquid into a jacketed pot and boil. Using the method of gradually adding sugar and increasing invert sugar, boil the mushroom bodies until they are transparent and the sugar liquid concentration reaches 65 Baume, then stop the heat. Pour the sugar liquid together with the mushroom bodies into a soaking vat and soak for 24 hours.

5. Baking: Remove the sugar-boiled mushroom pieces, drain them, place them on shallow trays, and put them into a drying room for baking. The baking temperature is 65-70°C, and stop when the mushroom bodies are transparent and not sticky to the touch.

6. Packaging: Pack the baked mushroom preserves in hard plastic food boxes or plastic bags and store them sealed.

II. Palatable Mushroom Rice Beans

1. Raw materials and formula: 50% potato starch, 29% strong flour, 20% broken rice flour, 1% edible mushroom powder. The edible mushroom powder can be made from 65% oyster mushroom powder and 35% shiitake mushroom powder.

2. Process flow

(1) Raw material mixing: Weigh the raw materials according to the formula, put them into a mixer, and mix evenly with warm water containing 0.2% salt. The amount of water added is 36% of the total flour.

(2) Rolling and bean forming: Send the mixed dough into a roller-type noodle press (Chongqing Lihuan Food Packaging Machinery Co., Ltd., Tel: 023-63507432) and press it into wide belt-shaped dough sheets, then immediately send them into a bean-shaped die granulator (Jiangsu Changzhou Yiqiu Zhongya Drying Equipment Co., Ltd., Tel: 0519-8905858) to press the dough sheets into bean-shaped wet blanks. The die of the granulator has a long diameter of 0.8 cm and a short diameter of 0.3 cm.

(3) Separation and screening: Separate the formed bean granules from the powder. The separated wet bean blanks are slightly dried with hot air and then sent to the next process, and the powder is immediately returned to the mixer for re-batching.

(4) Steaming and shaping: Put the slightly dried wet blanks on trays and send them into steaming equipment, treat with steam for 4 minutes to stabilize the bean granule shape. Then place at room temperature for 30 minutes.

(5) Drying and completion: Dry the bean granules obtained from the previous process at 95°C for 40 minutes to reduce their moisture content to 13%. Take them out and cool slowly, and when the moisture content drops to 11%, package them and they are ready.

III. Abalone Mushroom Canned Food

Abalone mushroom, also known as black abalone mushroom, is rich in nutrition, crisp in texture and delicious in taste, with thick flesh and short stems. It tolerates cooking and storage, and is very suitable for canning.

1. Material selection and trimming: Select abalone mushrooms with normal color and no diseases, insect pests, spots, or serious damage as raw materials. Use a stainless steel knife to remove impurities such as sawdust and cottonseed hulls from the base of the mushroom stems, keeping the trimmed surface intact.

2. Rinsing and grading: Soak and rinse the trimmed fresh mushrooms in clean water, and divide them into 2 grades according to cap diameter of 3-5 cm and 5-6 cm. Tear mushroom bodies over 6 cm by hand into 2-3 pieces, with each piece 3-4 cm.

3. Precooking and cooling: Boil in a jacketed pot or aluminum pot at a mushroom-to-water ratio of 1:1 for 2-3 minutes (until the mushroom bodies are fully cooked). Remove and put into clean water for rapid cooling. Keep the precooking water for preparing soup.

4. Soup preparation: 97.5% precooked mushroom water and 2.5% refined salt, boil and then filter through 4 layers of gauze for use as soup.

5. Can filling: Use twist-off glass jars. When filling, pack whole and sliced mushrooms separately by grade, requiring uniform size in the same jar. After filling, add hot soup until basically full, leaving a headspace of 0.8-1 cm.

6. Exhausting and sealing: Use the heating water displacement method for exhausting. When the center temperature of the jar reaches 80°C, seal it with a twist-off cap.

7. Sterilization and cooling: Sterilize while hot, then immediately put into cold water and cool to 38°C. Wipe off the water marks on the can surface, inspect, and put into storage.

IV. Edible Mushroom Drying Processing

Almost all edible mushrooms can be made into dried products. Drying processing includes sun drying, baking, and hot air drying. In spring, shiitake mushrooms and wood ear mushrooms are mainly baked, while in summer and autumn with high temperatures, straw mushrooms are mainly sun-dried. Hot air drying can be carried out in all four seasons, is suitable for various mushrooms, and gives good drying quality. The quality of drying is also closely related to mushroom harvesting, grading, stem trimming, cleaning, and slicing. When harvesting shiitake mushrooms, they should be separated by size, appearance, and thickness; flower mushrooms and thick mushrooms should be separated; tall-stemmed mushrooms, deformed mushrooms, and small mushroom buttons should be treated as substandard. Cut off the base of the mushroom stem (mushroom foot), leaving the stem 2-3 cm long, and remove weeds and sawdust. Drying method: Sun-dry or bake the graded fresh mushrooms over charcoal fire, and never pile them to ferment before they are dry. If baking over charcoal fire, the temperature should go from low to high, initially baking at 20-30°C for 6-8 hours, then at 50-60°C for 2-3 hours until the mushroom stems are completely dry. The dried mushrooms are suitable when they rustle when turned by hand and are easily broken when pinched. After cooling, they can be stored in plastic bags. During baking, note that charcoal or coal fire must not have smoke or off-odors, and strictly prevent broken mushrooms from burning and producing smoke, otherwise the quality of the dried mushrooms will be affected. In order to make the heat dissipate evenly, an iron plate can be placed over the fire; it is best to use a blower to send hot air or use steam pipes to send warm air for drying. For drying straw mushrooms, select mushroom eggs of uniform size, remove sand and mud, and use a knife to make two crosswise longitudinal cuts from the base, cutting 2/3 of the length of the mushroom egg into 4 petals; after sun-drying, they are called orchid mushrooms. Some are also cut longitudinally once from the side, leaving the base uncut, or cut into 2 petals. After cutting, sun-dry on a cement floor. Oyster mushrooms, phoenix-tail mushrooms, and enoki mushrooms can all be sun-dried or oven-dried whole.

V. Edible Mushroom Salting

After harvesting, clean and trim the edible mushrooms, immediately rinse with 0.6% saline water, and soak in 0.96% citric acid solution for 5-10 minutes for color protection. Use 10% brine to boil in a stainless steel or aluminum pot over high heat for 5-10 minutes (that is, "blanching"). Split the mushroom bodies open; it is best if there is no white core and the mushroom bodies are uniformly yellow. Drain the water, and immediately cool the blanched mushroom bodies in running water for 20-30 minutes. Add the mushroom bodies layer by layer into a vat at 20%-30% salt addition. After the vat is full, add saturated brine prepared with 55% metaphosphoric acid, 40% citric acid, and 5% alum as regulators, adjust to pH 3.5, and cover the mushroom surface layer. Insert a rubber hose into the vat and pump air 2-3 times a day to make the brine circulate up and down. Turn the vat 2-3 times in between, reversing the vat containing the salted mushrooms and pouring the entire vat of mushrooms into another empty vat. Salting is completed in about 20 days.

After salting, put them into packaging containers, add enough saturated brine to submerge them, and keep pH 3.5. Edible mushrooms suitable for salting include button mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and lion's mane mushrooms.

VI. Shiitake Mushroom Stem Floss

1. Raw material formula: 100 kg shiitake mushroom stems, 4 kg-6 kg high-quality soy sauce, 3 kg-4 kg white sugar, 2 kg-3 kg peanut oil, appropriate amounts of ginger and fennel, 0.5 kg scallions, 0.6 kg refined salt, 0.2 kg compound monosodium glutamate, 4 kg yellow wine, appropriate amounts of food coloring and five-spice powder.

2. Preparation

(1) Select shiitake mushroom stems with no sawdust, no insect damage, and no mildew, cut them into 1 cm long small sections, wash them, and soak them in water for 1-2 days to soften them.

(2) Add peanut oil to a pot, heat it, put in ginger and fry for a moment. Add soy sauce, refined salt, fennel, and other seasonings, add water and boil for 30 minutes, then filter, and add compound monosodium glutamate to make a compound umami sauce for later use.

(3) Put the mushroom stems into a pot, add an appropriate amount of water, bring to a boil over high heat, then switch to low heat and simmer for several hours. After they are thoroughly cooked and soft, take them out, drain them, and put them into a blender to crush.

(4) Put the crushed raw materials into a pot and cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the raw materials become semi-fibrous. Take them out and spread them on a bamboo mat, and after cooling, add the compound umami sauce.

(5) Put the seasoned material into a pot and dry-roast it, gradually reducing the heat and stirring frequently. Remove from the pot when the fibers are all loose.

3. Finished product characteristics: The shiitake mushroom stems are golden yellow in appearance, loose and soft in texture, without scorched spots, delicious in taste, and have a rich shiitake mushroom aroma. Package for sale.

VII. Mushroom Garlic Fresh Chili Sauce

Oyster mushrooms are not resistant to storage and long-distance transportation. Processing oyster mushrooms into a new type of compound seasoning, mushroom garlic fresh chili sauce, with a salty and delicious taste, is a good way to increase the value of oyster mushrooms.

1. Formula: 35% oyster mushrooms, 45% bean paste, 8%-10% red chili, 2%-3% sugar, 1.5%-2.5% salt, 1% ginger, 0.5% spices, and the remainder rapeseed oil and sesame oil.

2. Operation

(1) Preparation: Wash oyster mushrooms, spread them out to drain, tear them into thin strips, air-dry until mostly dry, then cut into minced pieces. Peel garlic cloves, wash them, and make garlic puree. Select high-quality red chilies with red color, spicy taste, and low moisture content, remove impurities, wash, drain, air-dry slightly, and chop.

(2) Deep-frying oyster mushroom mince: Heat rapeseed oil in a large pot to 150°C. Pour the oyster mushroom mince in batches into a wire skimmer with a relatively fine mesh, place it in the pot and fry for 5 seconds, constantly shaking the skimmer so that it is heated evenly. Remove when the oyster mushroom mince is crisp.

(3) Frying red chili: Pour the chopped chili in batches into the wire skimmer and fry in the pot until it slightly turns yellowish brown. Keep shaking the skimmer to prevent some chili from being under-fried or over-fried.

(4) Mixing the sauce: Take out the cooked rapeseed oil from the large pot, and add various raw and auxiliary materials according to the formula amount. Filter an appropriate amount of cooked rapeseed oil, stir while heating to 85°C, and fill into jars after 1 minute.

(5) Jar filling: Weigh the sauce body at 200 grams or 250 grams, fill it into washed and sterilized bottles or jars, add a layer of sesame oil to cover the top, and immediately seal the jar. If storage for more than 3 months is required, sterilization treatment should be carried out.

VIII. Edible Mushroom Flavored Pickles

Remove the base of the edible mushrooms, wash, blanch, and drain. Prepare the sauce: 100 kg bean paste, 4 kg vinegar, 20 kg white sugar, 0.4 kg monosodium glutamate, 0.2 kg chili powder, 15 g potassium sorbate, 0.01 kg citric acid, 0.3 kg five-spice powder, 0.1 kg other seasonings. Mix the above raw materials and grind them fine. Put 50 kg edible mushrooms into a large vat layer by layer with sauce, turn the vat once after 3 days, and after 10 days it is the finished product.