We are not the only ones who value mushrooms. Every forest creature loves them, and running, and flying and crawling. And living in the fungus itself. That's about them, taking our prey, today we'll talk. From insects, by the way, mushrooms are more useful than from people - worms eat the mushroom and carry the spores into the ground, thereby helping the mycelium to spread.

But what to do with worm mushrooms? It’s a pity to throw it away, to leave it is scary, we’ll suddenly get poisoned ... Let's figure it out.
Where do worms come from in mushrooms?

Worms, that is, insect larvae, hatch from eggs laid by various types of flies and fungal mosquitoes. Someone lives in an apple, someone lives in a raspberry, and some like mushrooms more. There are thicker and tougher worms in mushrooms - wireworms (larvae of click beetles). Insects prefer to fly when it is dry and sunny, so the likelihood of meeting a worm fungus is higher in good weather.
Is it possible to get poisoned by worm mushrooms?

Yes, if this mushroom is poisonous. There is a myth that worms do not start in poisonous mushrooms. This is a dangerous delusion. Very tasty and completely safe chanterelles and blackberries are not wormy. On the other hand, pigs are easily wormed, which cannot be eaten without boiling.

The worms themselves do not make the mushroom poisonous. The reasoning that you can get poisoned by the "waste products of worms" is unfounded. Do you know what propolis is? - That's right, also a waste product of an insect (bee).
What to do with worm mushrooms

Three options for your choice:

Leave the mushroom for the worms to eat. Let them be happy. This is what I do with very wormy, already rotten mushrooms. Their hats can be thrown under the trees in the country, maybe the mycelium will start.
Pretend we didn't notice them.
Get rid of the mushroom. You can drive out in two ways: soak a coarsely chopped mushroom for 1-2 hours in salt water. Or dry the mushroom. As soon as the mushroom begins to dry out, the worms will fall out of it themselves. Do not forget to sweep the floor in time, otherwise, as if not to scare someone ...

What not to do with worm mushrooms

In no case should you talk at the table about what you saw inside the mushroom. Suddenly, vegetarians are next to you ... Seriously, in fried mushrooms worms are invisible in appearance, and even more so in taste. Problems are possible with mushroom noodles or soup. A worm can emerge from the broth at the most inopportune moment - in a plate of a distinguished guest, for example. To avoid unpleasant surprises, it is better to filter the broth.

And "for dessert" I offer you an excerpt from Vladimir Soloukhin's wonderful book "The Third Hunt", which I read as a child.

You admire your find, but your heart is restless. He is beautiful, but he can be eaten by a worm. You cut it off, and inside is dust, or if not dust, then everything is in countless holes and tiny white worms. Will you be in last resort cut off white wheels from the root: maybe there are no worms closer to the hat. Here is the last cut, close to the hat, but even here there are wormhole holes. It remains to cut the hat itself. You cut it and throw it on the ground. Prey, it turns out, is not yours. Even earlier, nasty forest flies found that mushroom and made it their prey, laid testicles, from which now even more nasty forest worms divorced.

But on the other hand, when you cut a mushroom near the ground and see that the meat of the root is as white and pure as sour cream or lard, then your heart will skip a second time. And it turns out that you found one mushroom, as it were, twice, experienced double hunting joy from it.

Every lover of "silent hunting" is familiar with worm mushrooms. The nutritious gifts of the forest are loved not only by people, but also by insects that lay their eggs on them. These mushroom hunters are often ahead of humans.

A late mushroom picker gets mushrooms eaten by worms. Considering that each mushroom is obtained by hard work, it is a shame to throw them away. Maybe it can be somehow cleaned of worms and used for food - we'll figure it out further.

Why mushrooms become wormy

On fruiting bodies that have just emerged from the ground, special insects lay their eggs - mushroom mosquitoes and flies. AT warm weather eggs mature quickly and larvae emerge from them. They feed on mushroom pulp, grow, turn into adult insects and fly away.

The fungus does not suffer. On the contrary, the larvae help to move the spores into the soil from the bottom of the cap. The mushroom picker becomes more viable and increases the number of mushrooms.

The mushroom picker is upset when a young, appetizing fresh boletus or saffron mushroom, only cut with a sharp knife, turns out to be wormy. It is believed that worm mushrooms are unfit for food and their only purpose is to be thrown away.

In fact, the worms in the fungus are not dangerous to human health. They do not make the mushroom poisonous. Wormy mushrooms are edible. The only difficulty is that no one will like it if there is a pickled or fried worm in his plate.

The most experienced mushroom pickers know how to avoid such trouble. There are ways to process worm mushrooms that allow you to compete for forest finds and get them on the dinner table. The main thing is that the mushroom is not rotten or rotten.

It is better to throw away the old worm mushroom. Not because he's wormy, but because he's old. There are a lot of harmful substances in such a product. If you smell an old boletus or boletus, not even wormy, you can catch the smell of ammonia. But young, strong, not very wormy, with no signs of decomposition fruit bodies fit for food.

In industrial harvesting, mushrooms that are less than half affected by worms are considered edible.

What to do with worm mushrooms

Worms can live both in the legs and in the caps of mushrooms. If you cut the boletus and look at the cut, most likely it will be fresh, without holes. But if you break his hat, you can see many holes in which microscopic larvae sit.

Are poisonous mushrooms wormy

It can be said that almost all mushrooms in the forest are wormy, even if the holes in the stem or cap are invisible. It's just that each mushroom is at its stage of worminess - noticeable or imperceptible. Young dense formations are damaged more slowly than old and loose ones. But in wet hot weather even young mushrooms are rapidly colonized by larvae. It seems that they are already emerging from the ground corroded.

Everyone knows appetizing and tasty chanterelles. Having found a clearing covered with chanterelles, you can safely cut off all specimens in a row. Before placing them in a frying pan, they only have to be washed from the ground and blades of grass.

Some mushroom pickers are very mistaken, believing that worms do not affect poisonous mushrooms. Most of them are tasty food not only for worms, but also for snails. By the way, fly agarics and pale grebes do not taste bitter or smell bad and are often damaged by worms.

Summer is coming, which means a little more - a little, and in addition to the summer season, the mushroom season will also begin. There are people who do not like to go to the forest and pick mushrooms, but refuse rich mushroom soup, fried potatoes with mushrooms or pickled mushrooms with onions and vegetable oil hardly anyone can.

But very often mushroom pickers note that there seem to be a lot of mushrooms, but some of them are wormy. Someone immediately throws out such specimens, and some, as if nothing had happened, put them in their baskets and buckets. So is it dangerous to eat wormy mushrooms? Let's try to find an answer to this question.

Where and why do worms appear in mushrooms

Worms appear in mushrooms from larvae, which are deposited by some varieties of flies and fungal mosquitoes. In addition, another insect that lays its larvae on mushrooms is beetle - nutcracker, whose offspring are worms - wireworms, which differ from other individuals that eat forest delicacy in thickness and rigidity.

Like most living things, insects love dry and sunny weather, so it is at this time that worm fungi are much more common.

In addition, by eating mushrooms, worms become carriers of spores, which further contributes to the spread of mycelium.

If a worm mushroom is caught in the forest, then it is necessary to cut off all damaged elements from it, since worms eat mushrooms very quickly and can instantly spread from damaged specimens to clean ones.

What to do with worm mushrooms

If the mushroom is all rotten and wormy, then it is better to leave it in its place and not touch it, but go look for worthy clean specimens.

If the mushroom is only slightly affected by worms, then it can be taken, but at home it will be necessary to carry out simple manipulations with it:

  1. Cut into small pieces and pour heavily salted water for 2 - 4 hours.
  2. Send the mushroom to dry on the stove, in the oven or in the sun, but at the same time it is desirable on a slatted surface - when it starts to dry out a little, the worms will immediately jump out of it and will not be able to get back.

Is it possible to eat worm mushrooms

As noted above, if the mushroom is slightly damaged and subjected to simple processing, then no harm will be done to the body, but on the contrary, our body will receive the maximum benefit due to the presence of a sufficient amount of vitamins and microelements in mushrooms.

If the fungus is simply teeming with worms and at the same time it will not be subjected to additional processing, then the infection of the body is possible helminthiasis.

This disease can be detected in a person by conducting a series of diagnostic studies: an ultrasound of the intestine and an X-ray, donating blood, sputum and feces for analysis, endoscopy of the intestine and biopsy of its tissues.

In case of detection of such a serious disease as helminthiasis, it is necessary to immediately begin its treatment. But it is important to remember that treatment should only be prescribed by a specialist.

Treatment

First of all, a drug is prescribed, the action of which is aimed at weakening the action and reproduction of worms, this medicines, the main active ingredient of which is levamisole. Another remedy that is prescribed at the first stage of treatment of the disease are drugs that have an antihelminthic effect ( "Biltricide", "Vermox", "Wormil", "Helmintox", "Mebendazole", "Nemozol", "Nemocide").

The use of these drugs leads to the fact that the movements of the worms are paralyzed, and accordingly, after a while without movement and without food, they will begin to die.

It should be borne in mind that dead worms, their waste products and larvae will leave the human body not only through bowel movements, but also spontaneously. Therefore, for the period of treatment, it is necessary to carefully monitor your hygiene and change not only underwear, but also bed linen more often.

In addition to this method of treatment, you can use enemas, in which there will be a decoction of grass. To do this, pour 1 tablespoon of herbs crushed to a state of powder with 0.5 liters of hot, but not boiling water, leave for half an hour and use before going to bed.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that worm mushrooms themselves do not carry any particular danger if they are thoroughly treated with salt water or dried a little before cooking. After all, it’s so hard to leave a strong fungus in the forest that a worm ate a little, especially if the find is porcini…

Poor heat treatment of mushrooms can lead to the appearance in the human body of a disease such as helminthiasis.

If you still want to protect yourself and your family about possible consequences eating wormy mushrooms, as well as saving yourself from unnecessary trouble, it is better to leave a wormy specimen in the forest, preferably placing it on some bush, thus preparing food for the forest birds for the time of their possible starvation due to the lack of another food.

Kira Stoletova

Cleaning mushrooms is a mandatory procedure after harvesting a mushroom crop. The quality of the prepared dishes depends on the correctness and timeliness of its implementation.

Basic Rules

For those who collect mushroom harvest independently, the mushroom cleaning procedure begins already in the forest:

  • the fruits are sorted according to their appearance, throwing out with pockets of mold, with worms and large overgrown,
  • removed from the cut mushroom big trash: branches, foliage, needles,
  • the root and mushroom leg are cleaned of the remnants of sand and earth and cut to believe in worminess.

The main rule when cleaning is timeliness. With a long stay in a warm room without treatment, mushrooms lose appearance, acquire flabbiness and as a result deteriorate, becoming unusable. Properly clean mushrooms, processing them immediately after harvest.

If it is impossible to clean the mushrooms after harvest, it is permissible to store them in the refrigerator for a day.

For cleaning, you will need a convenient knife with a thin tip, which removes spoiled fragments and debris remaining on the mushroom surface. The blade of the knife should be sharp so as not to crumble the mushroom structure, but to cut it easily. A damp cloth is also required to wipe dried dirt.

Mushroom juice is able to color skin Therefore, gloves are used as protection.

For further preparation, cut, preferably in equal parts. The fibrous mushroom leg is divided with a knife across, the round mushroom cap is cut into small triangles.

mushroom washing

It is not always reasonable to include rinsing in water in the mushroom cleaning procedure. So they are recruiting a large number of moisture, losing taste qualities, therefore, in the absence of the need for washing, it is better to limit yourself to dry cleaning with a knife and rubbing wet wipe.

It is not necessary to soak the mushrooms to be dried and fried in water.

For soaking after dry cleaning, use cold water with the addition of a small amount of salt. This allows you to get rid of the worms remaining in the mushroom pulp.

Mushroom varieties intended for salting are soaked for 1-3 days, regularly changing the water to fresh.

Features of cleaning different types of mushrooms

Each mushroom variety has its own characteristics, how to properly clean them.

White

White will clean easily, because its growth sites are dry areas and moss. They cut off the remnants of the earth on the leg and wipe the hat. Damaged fragments are carefully trimmed.

Wormy mushrooms are useful in dried form. When dried, the worms crawl out, while the dense structure of the porcini fungus retains its beneficial properties.

Boletus and boletus

Boletus and boletus are often wormy. They immediately check the leg, cutting off the tip. Large caps are separated and cut in half, also to check for worminess. More often, the worms are located in the lower part of the cap, leaving the top intact, so the spongy layer is removed with a knife.

The leg is cleaned by removing the top layer. The cap is sometimes peeled, although this is not necessary.

Oilers

Butterheads are difficult to clean due to the slippery surface of the cap. The film covering the head after heat treatment becomes coarse and bitter, therefore it must be cut off.

So that the slippery film does not stick to the hands during the cleaning process, it is permissible to dry the oil slightly or pour boiling water over it.

In young specimens, only the mushroom leg is cut. In adults, the top layer is additionally scraped off and the collar under the hat is removed.

Chanterelles

Chanterelles contain a substance that repels worms, so you do not need to clean chanterelle mushrooms. Their pre-culinary processing is limited to cutting off a third of the leg, where the remains of the earth remain. Chanterelles are not skinned and no parts are cut off.

The only difficulty encountered in the process of cleaning these mushrooms is their unusual shape, consisting of plates, between which debris gets stuck. Soaking allows you to get rid of it, which is useful for chanterelles to give elasticity and strength.

Ryzhik and mushrooms

Honey mushrooms and mushrooms are considered the cleanest. To clean them, it is enough to remove the adhering foliage and needles, cut the tip of the mushroom leg with earth or sand and remove the rotten and darkened fragments.

Champignons

Small young champignons almost do not clean, they only remove adhering dirt with a damp cloth, because in the process of washing they lose their taste, gaining a lot of water. In adult large specimens, many prefer to remove the skin that has lost its attractive appearance from the cap. This is done with a knife, moving from the edge towards the central part of the cap.

How to pre-clean mushrooms (Butter, Polish, chelyshi, aspen, white)

Milk mushrooms

Milk mushrooms are classified as mushrooms, which must be soaked before cooking, so it is easy to clean the mushrooms from dirt by placing them in water. Cold water It will also be a way to get rid of the bitter taste.

A container with soaked milk mushrooms is placed in a cool place so that the mass does not sour.

Soaked milk mushrooms with a brush, knife or hard sponge are cleaned to white color, remove damaged areas, then finally rinse.

Conclusion

Cleaning mushrooms is a procedure that allows you to save quality and taste characteristics for further cooking.

Probably, there is no such person who has never been in the forest. Someone is there to just relax, take a walk or get some fresh air. And someone walks and "hunts", in this case it means " silent hunting", i.e. picking mushrooms. And everything would be fine, but not everything is so smooth here either. Sometimes, you start cutting a mushroom to put it in a basket, and you see - it is wormy! Is it worth carrying such a "prey" home? And in general, is it possible to eat wormy mushrooms? You will now learn about this and many other things.

Can you eat worm mushrooms?

Most are more inclined to believe that there is nothing dangerous in this. The worm is not a fool, he will not eat a bad mushroom. To some extent this is true. After all, there are quite a few intact mushrooms in the forest, therefore, even with industrial harvesting, specimens that are less than half damaged by worms are considered quite suitable for human consumption. Of course, before sending them to the store shelves, they subject the mushrooms to a special treatment. Therefore, if you decide to collect mushrooms for yourself, then you should not take worms. Stick to the rule - less is better. Otherwise, you may have a problem with how to protect uninfected mushrooms from worms. After all, the larvae are so voracious that they can quickly destroy all your "prey" collected in the forest.

What to do with worm mushrooms?

If you still decide to collect them, then cut off all the places damaged by the larvae. So you will have at least some guarantee that others good mushrooms won't get hurt. When you get home, treat them as soon as possible. To do this, cut each worm mushroom into pieces and put it in heavily salted water for several hours. Thus, all the larvae will come out of them.

If you decide not to take a worm mushroom, then in no case do not throw it on the ground. It is better to put it on a branch or prick it on a stick with spores down. In this position, it will not rot, but dry - the spores will begin to dust, and soon new foci of mycelium will appear nearby. There is another plus to this. Dried mushroom in the cold winter time will serve as excellent food for animals. The forest dwellers will only thank you.

White worm mushroom. What to do?

It is considered the most desirable prey not only for humans, but also for worms. It usually grows in groups. Therefore, when you find one mushroom, be sure to look around, most likely you will find several more. Collecting an intact crop is a great success! But most often, such mushrooms have already been tasted by worms or other forest dwellers.

But don't worry, that doesn't mean they're not worth picking up. You just need to remember a few rules. The worms damage the white fungus, usually from the tubular layer. Therefore, before putting it in the basket, slightly cut the center of the cap. If there are no worms, then you can safely take it. If you still found passages and larvae in the incision, then, to be sure, check the stem of the mushroom. She may not have been touched yet.

So let's conclude: is it possible to eat wormy mushrooms? As it has already become clear, there is no single answer to this question. If the mushrooms are not severely damaged by worms, then they can be eaten. Only before processing it is necessary to soak them in But if the mushroom is not only wormy, but also old, it is advisable to leave such an instance in the forest. Otherwise, they can be poisoned. Therefore, it is up to you to decide whether it is possible to eat wormy mushrooms or whether it would be better to refuse them.