Morels and Ramps Preserved in Oil

After I finally snagged a couple bags of mushrooms, I ate myself silly on morels for a few days, then turned the rest into some oil based preserves with the rest of the young ramps I had. It's similar to other mushroom pickles on this website, but heavy on the oil, Italian-style.

Every year I try to share at least one recipe that use mushrooms preserved like this, or in a similar method. The reason is that preserved or pickled mushrooms have the closest texture to freshly cooked ones possible, and is a great alternative to drying or freezing.

Freezing denatures the texture and changes it, as does drying. Don't get me wrong, I use drying and freezing too if I feel like it, but generally, at a restaurant or at home, some sort of oil or vinegar based preserve will be the first thing I make when I want to preserve some mushrooms during the growing season to keep their fresh, tender texture.

Preserving mushrooms purely under oil can be good, but I wouldn't exactly say it's a preserve to make if you don't have at least a little amount of experience preserving things via  air exclusion at home or in a professional setting, there isn't as much safe, forgiving acidity as with pickles. Fear not, I've adjusted this recipe so you don't have to worry.

That being said, one thing that you absolutely, positively must do:

For safety, the morels must always stay under the oil in the fridge, since exposure to air can invite bacterial growth, like any other pickle.

These oil based morels and ramp preserves are safe, and easy though. You may be wondering how.

It's simple, I cheat and added vinegar to mushrooms as I cook them, which lowers the ph of the morels to under 4.2, perfectly safe for a few months of storage. What you end up with is a preserve with a low ph of something that's been gently pickled, and the silky texture of an oil based preserve.

They were great on all kinds of things, and don't need to be processed in a water bath to hold for a while, although they could be. They're perfectly fine hanging out in the fridge until you need them, provided they stay underneath the oil and don't dry out, which, with the amount of oil in the recipe, shouldn't be a problem.

I kept a few batches with differing vinegar solutions around for a year, and ate them at different points of the year, afterwords I recorded the best one, and, here we are.

Uses for the morel preserves

You might be thinking, ok Alan, that sounds like a cute project, but after I preserve the morels, what can I do with them.

In short, think of these like a condiment, something just waiting to pop out of the jar and enhance something mild, and simple. Here's some places I would use them, note that I like to serve them warmed up or at room temperature. Pickled things taste very different when they're warm, and using the long shelf life has been a secret weapon of mine in restaurants for years.

Oh, one more thing, the oil is mostly for air exclusion/preservation purposes, when you want to eat the morels and ramps, lift them out of the jar with a slotted spoon. The oil can be used to make salad dressings, etc, or discarded.

Here's some ideas for using the preserves. They were great on some scrambled eggs.

• Spoon some over warm scrambled eggs
• Wilt some wild greens like you would spinach, then warm up the preserves and spoon some on top to make a dish of wilted nettles, amaranth, lambs quarter, etc, even more special
• Warm them up and spoon over some baked white-fleshed fish, and a few leaves of watercress
• Toss them with fresh sauteed morels, for a combo of fresh and pickled, they'll add a nice sparkle
• Warm them up and put on top of whatever piece of meat is for dinner
• Smear a piece of hot grilled bread with some butter, then top with warmed up preserves and some wilted greens

More 

Forager's Guide to Morel Mushrooms