On my last weekly trip to the grocery store, I wanted mushrooms to put in lasagna. (I chop up or grate veggies to use instead of meat in our lasagna.) None of the mushrooms were on sale, so I reluctantly threw the cheapest ones into the cart. As I was walking out of the produce section at Fareway, I glanced at the discount shelf and saw that it was full of mushrooms. Dexter loves mushrooms. I think mushrooms are okay in small portions if they’re in small pieces. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with 44 oz. of mushrooms, but they were such a good deal that I decided to figure something out. So, instead of 8 oz. of mushrooms for $1.69, I came home with this stockpile for $2.98!
Okay, so I actually didn’t purchase an open package of mushrooms in IKEA Pruta. Half that package went onto a frozen pizza as soon as I got home. The other half will go on lasagna tomorrow. I waited a few days, letting my sell-them-for-cheap-’cause-they’re-old mushrooms get even older. Finally, Monday after work, I looked around online for ideas on how to freeze them. I really thought the internet was just going to say, “Are you kidding me? Why would you freeze mushrooms?” But, intead, it offered these directions from cooks.com. I don’t usually use whole mushrooms, and didn’t want to deal with trying to cut up frozen mushrooms, and boiling mushrooms just seemed like a bad idea, so I went with the bottom set of directions.
First, I pulled off the stems and wiped off my whole mushrooms.
Then, I melted some butter and tossed in my pre-washed and cut baby bellas.
I used my Mushroom Xpress (basically an egg slicer, only much more vicious–believe me, I tested out the blade with my fingers a few weeks ago) to slice the mushroom caps right into my pan.
After the mushrooms had cooked (about 5 minutes after I was done adding everything), I let them cool on the stove top for a while. Then I packaged them into four snack-sized zip-top bags.
To keep them free of freezer burn, I put the four snack-sized bags of mushrooms into a quart-sized freezer bag, labeled, dated, and froze. I plan on using these in eggs for our weekly breakfast for dinner meals.
You clever girl! Liked the pictures.
isn’t the freezer awesome!
way to be creative! i pack my stuff in the freezer in smaller packages as well and then put them in larger freezer bags. keeps everything simple.
I am so impressed!
Impressive! I’m not the world’s biggest fan of mushrooms, but I’m learning to be. If you’ve got any great mushroom recipes you wanna send my way, I’d be all up for it!