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drying Jerked mushrooms.. Who's with me?!

I've always been a fan of Jerky and jerked foods, but have relatively little experience with the actual process, outside of jerking mushrooms.. And with that said, most of what I have expanded on is based on this recipe the 3foragers offered up. I'd love to expand on that a little more, and wonder how many of you are well in the know of crafting the mushroom jerky already.
The process I use involves boiling the mushrooms first, from 10-30mins (by species), and then marination for 6-72 hours(depending on how backed up I am).. Starting hot and then going in the cooler until ready for dehydrating.

Some of the burning issues/questions I have are:
-Can you jerk certain mushrooms, freeze and vacseal them.. Unthaw and then dehydrator process them, say 3-6 moons forward? I usually end up spending most of the best hunting time stuck in my kitchen because I'm watching/nursing the dehydrator. I would much rather put off the dehydrator work until winter, when the house is drier and I'm inside more anyway. I usually end up doing about half as much as I could because of this.
-I know the liquid from boil of certain mushrooms (like this Grifola) has value, but I'm not sure about storing it on the longterm for later use.. I would use it for soups or something later, but really have no call or time for it when it's fresh. Feel bad wasting it.

I'm also curious to other methods employed to achieve the end result.. And what species are your favorites to jerk? I'm definitely stuck on Maitake and Honeys, but I don't doubt others are just as tasty.


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That's an interesting question that I hadn't even considered. With Honey mushrooms you wouldn't, because you need to discard the boil, and then rinse them over again with more boiling water. But I wouldn't know how it would work with mushrooms where the water doesn't need to be discarded.
 
It could probably work with shitake since in Asian cooking in a lot of dishes you simmer them in the wok with teriyaki etc. and still use that sauce when you stir fry it with the veggies/rice etc.

Was thinking boil them, turn the burner off, let cool, and refrigerate to finish marinating.
 
I think I've heard they do, and oysters too, but I've yet to try them. I might try that method with those.
Most of my time loss is on the backend, dehydrating.. I can prep and have many batches marinating in the time it takes to finish one batch. Then I'm backed up and start running out of space in the cooler, so I wonder about freezing them for later use or dehydration.

They are also pretty good in stir fry, like you mentioned.. Or even just cold in salads, or as is. I lose about half of them in production.. One way or the other. Especially Grifola.. All I've eaten today except a bagel w/cc I was offered at some point.

I've prepped two more batches since I put the first on the rack this morn, and will probably pull another 2-4 batches from the remaining Grifola, depending on how much I can use for jerky.. Figure 8 hours a batch in the dehydrator, 2 batches a day. It gets to be a bit of a marathon, consecutively.. Especially with how much I have going on, otherwise, when these are in season. Eventually I get burned out and space checking on it, sometimes ruining the whole batch.

The obvious solution would be to upgrade my dehydrator, but I haven't figured out a solution to that yet, in my price range.
 
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