Frozen shrooms?

[Philosopher]

I put my fresh shrooms in a paper bag in the fridge and the next day when I was adding another freshly picked one in there the other shrooms were hard, is this because they are frozen? Or do mushrooms naturally harden when cold? I don't think the fridge would freeze water....

If they are frozen I heard it can destroy the shroom. Since water expands it breaks all of the cell walls in the shrooms making it bad or something? I lowered the temp. And in a few hrs ill see how they are. It was just weird feeling solid hard mushrooms. Do you think something is wrong?

 

[Pup Tentacle]

Freezing them won't make them toxic to you at all, however it does make for a disgusting puddle of blown out cells and liquid when thawed out. Still active, just pretty yucky to get down in my opinion.

They work like other mushrooms they have cells walls composed of chitin. When you pop portabellas in the fridge do they get rock hard when they're cold? Nope - sounds like your fridge is a bit too cold.

 

[Philosopher]

Yeah they were gross. I had to throw out 2 good sized shrooms . When I turned the temp up a few hrs later they were green and black and blue like my other old ones I threw out. I couldn't eat em

 

[Orion]

Doh! You just have to make sure they are fully dessicated and sealed off, stored with yet more desiccant in the air tight container. Then you can put them in the cold if you wish.

 

[InMotion]

Freezing mushroom specimens is a classic mistake. Done it myself. It ruins their cell walls when they thaw or something. Yea they turn to brown mush no matter what you do.

 

[Hieronymous]

Sometimes they will dehydrate in the fridge. The air in the fridge is very low humidity so it will draw the moisture out of the shrooms. Some newer fridges circulate moist air so it depends on the fridge.

I wouldn't recommend it though, I'd dehydrate them and then freeze them.

 

[nicechrisman]

I remember one time I picked a bunch of frozed azurescens early in the morning. They thawed into the nastiest black goo.

 

[Philosopher]

They mushed like mushies. But it's cool. Do any of you know if this is bad? It may be early cobweb. The cakes are turning grey and some of the shrooms caps have fuzz around them.

 

[Philosopher]

The bad shrooms were dead before the grey and the black is just spores. The smaller ones shriveled up cuz the big ones must've taken all the nutrients

 

[Infundibulum]

guys I have been freezing fresh shrooms in the past and they didn't turn to mush when they thawed. They do leaked water but the mushroom structure was fairly preserved. That was with B+ strain (in case the mush result is strain-specific).

I largely believe that the frozen-shrooms-turning-to-mush is mostly a myth (based however on a good educated guess of what might happen...) and that few if any have ever tried that themselves.

Just for the record I was freezing shrooms as at that time I preferred to eat them as is, frozen straight out of the freezer, like icecream sticks - when my freezer died I had the chance to observe, in my surprise that they did not turn to mush.

 

[InMotion]

I lost four styrofoam tubs of fruits that way many moons ago. Wish it was a myth. Maybe it has to do with the setting?

How do you thaw them?

I'll repeat the experiment with photo-documentation happily when mushroom season arrives...

 

[Pup Tentacle]

I can't tell if that's just spores on the cakes making them look grey or what. Cobweb is grey and "whispier" than myc.

Just keep fruiting them... and see where that goes. Try to pick the shrooms just after the veil on the underside tears but before they blow spores all over.

Maybe take a shot at making some spore prints... one more step towards self-sustainability


They look dry - you misting and fanning 4 times a day?

Judging from the long stipes and tiny caps... those little guys are begging for more FAE.

 

[Philosopher]

Yeah I'm about to just redunk them and start a new flush. These are the pics I took after I harvested. The dry shrooms were on the same cakes as the huge healthy ones too. Idk.

But I can definitely say that my frozen shrooms turned a gross green and black within a day going from frozen to cold. Either way, don't risk it. Be sure to dry completely before trying to freeze anything. And if you want to put fresh ones in the fridge you should pick one a day early and put it in the fridge to make sure it doesn't freeze. I'm pretty sure the fridge wasn't 32 degrees so I'm not sure why it got hard....

 

[Infundibulum]

I lost four styrofoam tubs of fruits that way many moons ago. Wish it was a myth. Maybe it has to do with the setting?

How do you thaw them?

I'll repeat the experiment with photo-documentation happily when mushroom season arrives...

They were slowly frozen (from room temperature to -10in the freezer) and also slowly thawed to room temperature as the freezer died overnight. Maybe this had something to do with it? To be honest I would also like to see more repetition of such observations. Let's not forget that my observation was pretty much an n=1...