Pickled Mushrooms - Page 214

So we had three choices of mushrooms from the recipe - Button, Cremini or Brown Beech.  Harris Teeter had Cremini and Button.  I decided to go with Cremini, since they had both baskets of loose and pre-packaged ones.  I wanted to pick the best so I dug into the basket and then reached for what I thought was the box of bulk mushrooms waiting to restock the basket.  It wasn't a box of mushrooms.  It was a spacer to keep the basket pushed to the front.  Behind it was something I never want to see again - not going to even describe it.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to bash Harris Teeter.  I expect most stores would have the same issue.  It's just a place you never look.  Harris Teeter had nearly all the ingredients I wanted, with great quality.  The mushrooms were beautiful.  Point is, don't go digging in the backs of coolers.

So we got into the recipe, got our jars stuffed and were heating the brine when we noticed that this recipe probably was going to have proportion problems.  There just wasn't a lot of brine and there were a LOT of jars of mushrooms.  So we doubled the brine batch.  When we poured the brine over the mushrooms, we felt vindicated as the brine amount was perfect for the jars.  But then the mushrooms started sucking in the brine and shrinking up.  We figure we could have carefully alternated mushrooms and brine in the jars and had a perfect batch with only one batch of brine.  Now we have jars that are half mushrooms and full of brine.  Sigh.

It was interesting doing this batch of "pickles" right after the pickled peaches.  While both will be pickles, the flavorings couldn't be more different.  Peaches, lemongrass, allspice, cinnamon, mace, ginger, cloves and peppercorns vs, mushrooms, mustard, bay leaf, thyme and salt.

We did add a fresh sprig of thyme to each jar for pretty.

Tasting at 1 week: Love the flavor and texture.  Tastes like it needs more time to soak in.

Advice: Fill your jars half with mushrooms and then pour brine to cover.  As they cool and the mushrooms shrink, add more mushrooms and brine until the jar is full of mushrooms and brine.  Also, don't explore hidden crevices in grocery stores!  Let them sit a little longer than a week.