With the onset of warm weather, many residents of stuffy cities go to the forests to hunt mushrooms. This not only helps them to relax in nature, but also provides tasty and he althy natural food. In order not to get poisoned, you need to know which mushrooms you can collect. Some of them look like poisonous, others are conditional
edible. But there are also mushrooms that are very loved by many people for their ease of preparation and pleasant taste. One of them is a blue foot. This mushroom is called differently: blue root, bluish, and its scientific name is the lilac-legged row. Some mushroom pickers are afraid to take it because of its blue color - and in vain, it is edible and very tasty.
Where does blueleg grow?
This mushroom is common in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere. It is collected in the European part of Russia, in Kazakhstan and the Black Sea region. True, in the south it gives two crops a year: it appears in the spring, and thenautumn. But to the north only from August there is a blue foot. This mushroom withstands slight frosts, so it is harvested until October - November.
From trees, the rowing prefers ash or conifers, but chooses forest belts or woodlands. Very rarely it grows alone, most often it makes up "witch rings". And every year, under favorable conditions, the blue foot grows in the same place. Therefore, mushroom pickers know these places and in a good season they collect up to 200 kilograms.
What kind of soil does this mushroom prefer
He loves woodlands, but the largest specimens grow where there is a lot of humus. After all, it doesn’t matter if there are trees for blue-footedness, the earth is more important for them. They like humus, sandy or semi-sandy soils. Bluefoots can often be found on abandoned farms, near piles of garbage or manure, on rotted leaves and fallen needles. They love to grow near fences and even in gardens and orchards. Rows are thought to be most common in open areas, especially grasslands and other grazing areas.
Features possessed by blue foot mushroom
Description of this saprophyte is rarely found in popular literature. Some authors classify rowing mushrooms as conditionally edible mushrooms, but among mushroom pickers it is considered very tasty. Its characteristic feature is a strong fruity smell, which not everyone likes, but lovers say that it looks like anise and is quite pleasant. The young rows are the most delicious, the old ones become watery, loose and often lose their characteristics. How to find out what is in front of
are you really blue foot mushroom?
The photo of these saprophytes shows that they all have a characteristic lilac-violet color, as if it was stained with ink. It is dense, rather thick and long - up to 10 centimeters. The structure of the leg is longitudinally fibrous, from top to bottom it is slightly wider and darker than the rest of the surface. The base of the cap has a slight flocculent coating.
What this mushroom looks like
Young bluelegs are very attractive, they look like round buns from above. After all, their hat is fleshy, dense and semicircular. It is convex, and the edge is slightly wrapped inside. Its color is most often matte cream or yellowish with purple stains. And in young mushrooms, the cap is bright purple. Its surface is always smooth and shiny, but in the absence of rain it becomes dry and fades. Hat size can reach 25 centimeters.
The plates of the blue foot are large, thin and frequent, in young mushrooms they are white with
violet hue, and with age become yellowish or purple. The spore powder is pale pink in color. The flesh is dense and fleshy, turning purple at the break and emitting a pleasant fruity smell. Mushrooms that are old or have survived frost lose their purple hue and become yellowish. It is better not to take such saprophytes, because, in addition to being easily confused with inedible ones, they become tasteless.
What mushrooms does blueleg look like?
A feature of the blue foot is what is confusedit is possible only with other edible mushrooms: for example, with purple row or May mushroom. It still looks like a weed row, but it is much smaller, and the cobweb is purple, which has a bedspread under the hat. If you mix it up, it's okay - all these mushrooms are edible.
The blueleg is a bit like some poisonous saprophytes. For example, goat cobwebs and white-violet can be distinguished from it by the yellowish color of the pulp and an unpleasant odor, and mycena by the rough edge of the cap and white spore powder. Something similar to the blue-footed row is fibrous, however, it is
thinner and characteristic ash gray.
How to cook this mushroom
Although some experts classify the mushroom as a conditionally edible mushroom, you can eat it in any form except raw. After all, one of the most delicious saprophytes is the blueleg. This mushroom tastes like champignons and even a little chicken meat. Most often it is pickled and s alted, but it can also be fried and even dried. After all, the dense fibrous pulp allows you to store the blue foot in a dried form for a long time.
The most important thing is that this mushroom must be washed well under running water before cooking. After all, the frequent plates and the love of the blue foot for sandy soils lead to the fact that small grains of sand are clogged under the hat. It is also recommended to remove the skin. Fans say that these mushrooms can not even be pre-cooked, but experts still recommend boiling them for 10-15 minutes before cooking and draining the water. Then the blue legs can be pickled, s alted, fried ormake pies out of them. Their peculiarity is the specific pleasant smell of anise, which intensifies during heat treatment.
Recipes
The most delicious and loved by many food is fried potatoes with onions and mushrooms.
It is best to fry them in vegetable oil, but you can also use lard. It is advisable to pre-boil the blue-legs a little and let the water drain. Cut potatoes into slices, onion rings, cut large mushrooms into two or four parts. They should be somewhere in half as much as potatoes. 5 minutes before cooking, add spices and herbs to taste: dill, pepper and bay leaf.
The pickled blueleg is very tasty. This mushroom is pickled without legs. After you have cleaned and washed the hats, boil them for 15 minutes, and drain the water. Pour the marinade over the caps and cook for another 20 minutes. For marinade, you need to take two tablespoons of s alt and sugar per liter of water, several leaves of bay, currant and cherry, 10 black peppercorns and 5 cloves of garlic. Five minutes before the end of cooking, add a spoonful of vinegar - and delicious mushrooms are ready.
How to grow edible mushrooms
Blueleg is one of the saprophytes that grow well in the garden. If you
if you breed a row in the country, you will always be provided with tasty and he althy food. It is good because it is rarely wormy, and it does not need special conditions for growth, as long as the soil is well fertilized. There are two ways to grow mushrooms.
The mostknown, but not very reliable, is to pour the water in which the mushrooms were washed, containing their remains and pieces of cap, into the place where you want to start a mushroom plantation. The best result will be if you collect more old, overripe blueleg caps at the end of the mushroom season. They will need to be soaked for a day, and then poured onto the ground.
The second way is planting mycelium. It is necessary to carefully cut off the top layer of turf along with the mushrooms and plant them in the garden, after making a small hole. In order for mushrooms to start growing well, they need light frosts, as well as tall grass and fertilized soil. If you do everything right, next year you can harvest large harvests of mushrooms from April to November and enjoy delicious dishes from them.
