Preserving Your Fungi Harvest, Duxelles-Style

Looking for another way to save all of those delicious fresh mushrooms? Here is a super simple recipe that will make you thankful you thought ahead this winter! In the past I have used hens, chickens, oysters and beefsteak mushrooms, but pretty much any kind of fungi will work in a duxelles.
The end result is a frozen umami mushroom bomb that you can use in sauces, soups, meatloaf, gravy, stuffing, whatever your heart desires!
Ingredients
- At least one pound of mushrooms
- 1 shallot
- 1-2 garlic cloves
- Fresh thyme
- Olive oil
- Dry Sherry
- Unsalted butter

Instructions
Finely chop your mushrooms
In a pan, heat olive oil and pad of unsalted butter
Finely chop shallots and garlic, sweating on low heat for 2-3 minutes
Add mushrooms, fresh thyme, salt and pepper to taste
Cook on medium/medium-low for approximately 10 minutes, or until mushrooms have released their water
De-glaze the pan with dry sherry
Place mushroom mix in ice cube trays, then freeze

Use cubes throughout the year for delicious soups, sauces and stuffings. They are a staple ingredient in my kitchen.
Plum out of wild mushrooms? You’re in luck! Join me for one of my upcoming fungi forages:
Sunday September 21 in Norwell, MA (10am – 12:30pm)
Sunday September 28 in Newton (10am – 12pm)
Sunday October 5 in Lincoln, MA (10am – 12pm)
Saturday October 11 in Medford, MA (10am – 12pm)
This past week in the woods has been the best I have seen all year. I have already harvested nearly 20 pounds of fresh hen of the woods/maitake, about 5 pounds of chickens, baskets full of painted boletes, brown birch boletes, black trumpets, turkey tail, beefsteaks and the year’s first Hericium/Lion’s Mane mushroom…and it’s only Wednesday!

