One Pan Wonders

I went a little crazy over the weekend and bought WAY too many mushrooms. LOL. First, in the course of running my normal errands, I was at Costco and found creminis and chanterelles for a good price. I bought one of each... Then, while shopping at the Asian grocery store with Sarbar, I found wood ear and oyster mushrooms. The oysters were $1.99 a package!! WHOA!   I couldn't resist, especially since they were so nice and fresh looking; not all dried up and wrinkly like you normally see. The wood ear mushrooms (aka cloud ear fungus), I have never seen fresh before, so that was a fun find.

       

Much to my husband's dismay (he HATES mushrooms), I decide to run all of them through the dehydrator... 10 trays worth of mushrooms!  I sliced them fairly thinly, but found it was easier to slice them with my fingernails (sort of pulling/tearing them apart) than it was with a paring knife. I set the dehydrator to 135* and let it run.

  

I was pleasantly surprised to see how little time the mushrooms took to dry. I thought they were going to take much longer. The leathery wood ear mushrooms were done first. They turned into nice crispy little black lumps. I'll be using these (along with the shiitakes I already had dried) in Asian backpacking dishes in the near future.

I let all of the mushrooms dry until they were able to be snapped/broken with my fingers, and NO damp spots. After allowing them to cool completely, I packaged each of the different kinds of mushrooms into zip locking plastic bags.

Northwest Mushroom Rice Pilaf
Serves 1.



1/3 cup instant rice
2 T instant wild rice
4 T dried mushrooms (I used a mix of white, cremini, chanterelles and oysters)
1/2 t dried onion flakes
1 T dried mixed vegetables
1/2 t vegetable or chicken buillion
1/2 t butter powder
1/2 t dried basil
1/4 t dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste

At home: combine everything in a zip locking plastic bag.

In camp: add enough hot water to cover, stir and let sit until the rice and mushrooms are rehydrated. Stir and enjoy!

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Pasta with Creamy Mushroom Sauce
Serves 1

This is the recipe I had promised to Spindle last week... You must like mushrooms for this one! I use a blend of cremini, button and oyster mushrooms.

1/2 cup cooked and dehydrated pasta
2 T mushroom sauce
3 T dried mushrooms
1 T dried mixed vegetables
1 T powdered milk
1/4 t garlic powder

At home: combine all of the ingredients in a zip locking plastic bag.

In camp: add enough hot water to cover (about 1 cup). Place bag in a freezer bag cozy and allow to rehydrate. Stir well before eating.