Neutralising bitter mushroom soup: Timeless kitchen secrets
The mushroom soup starts the holiday feast. Remember to use two simple additions while cooking to ensure the Christmas Eve dinner doesn't begin with a bitter aftertaste. You're likely to find them in your kitchen.
After hours of gathering and drying mushrooms, standing in long queues at the shop, cooking, and seasoning, the mushroom soup turns out bitter. To avoid this, add two straightforward ingredients to the soup. With these additions, you can savour the pure woodland flavour of mushrooms without any bitterness.
Bitter mushroom soup
Simply add onion and bay leaves to the soaking mushrooms. These additions effectively neutralise the unpleasant bitter taste, ensuring your dishes are delicious. It's an old, proven method from our mothers and grandmothers. Even after many years, it remains reliable.
Pour lukewarm, boiled water over the dried mushrooms. Add a quartered onion along with its skins. Toss in three to four bay leaves and leave for several hours. Then, remove the soaked mushrooms, rinse them, and cook in fresh water. The onion and bay leaves will have absorbed all the bitterness, making the mushroom soup or pierogi filling taste amazing.
How to save mushroom soup?
If you forgot these additions and notice a characteristic, somewhat unpleasant bitterness after tasting the soup in the pot, all is not lost. This may be due to improper cooking, using too many mushrooms, or incorrect soaking. Potatoes can come to the rescue. Add a few raw, washed, and peeled potatoes to the soup and cook for 10-15 minutes. After this time, remove them from the pot. They will absorb some of the bitterness without affecting the taste of the soup.
The bitterness can also be reduced by adding cream or milk. Pour a ladle of the broth and gently heat the dairy in it. Add to the entire pot and bring to the boil. This step is crucial to prevent the soup from curdling.
