How to rehydrate dried mushrooms

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 150 g, you will need:

• 1 50 g dried morels
• 2 water
• Total weight: 50 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Start to finish
10 min.	1 hour	1 hour 10 min.

Step by step recipe

• 1: Take 50 g dried morels out of the packet.
• 2: Put them in a bowl and cover with hot water (not boiling).
  There should be about 1/2 an inch (1 cm) between the floating mushroms and the bottom of the bowl.
  Cover and leave to soak for half an hour.
• 3: After this time, remove the mushrooms carefully from the water with a skimmer or, better still, an "araignée" (spider). It is important not to tip the mushrooms out with the water as this is usually full of earth or sand and you will dirty the mushrooms again. So, the mushrooms need to be lifted cleanly out of the water.
  Set aside the soaking water for later.
• 4: If you are using morels, which tend to be full of dirt (and only in this case) put them in a fresh bowl of hot water and leave to soak again for half an hour.
  For other mushrooms, one soaking is enough.
• 5: Meanwhile, go back to the soaking water which is much too good to throw away. It has been transformed by absorbing the flavour of the mushrooms and is now a very flavoursome mushroom "jus".
  Scoop out this "jus" with a ladle, being careful not to tip or stir up the water. Collect as much as you can that is "clear", without any dirt or sediment.
• 6: Keep the mushroom "jus" in a sealed container in the fridge, but for a few days at most.
  It can be used in any savoury recipe that asks for a flavoured liquid, such as stock (like morel risotto with vin jaune and mont d'or).
• 7: The final thing to do with the mushrooms is to drain them thoroughly before using. The best way of doing this is to use a salad spinner. Once drained, your rehydrated mushrooms are ready for use.

Remarks

With morels, the proportion of dried mushrooms to rehydrated is 1:3. In other words, 50 g of dried morels will give you three times that weight when reyhdrated: 150 g.

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