Putting-Up Sheep's Head

Now that all the good caps have been pulled for the food dehydrator we will have a lot of 'good scraps' that we will 'Put Up' for the freezer.

Although Sheep's Head mushrooms freeze well they take up much more room in the freezer if frozen 'as found' than they do 'when processed'.
When you find and eat as many wild mushrooms and other wild edibles as I do you also will be picky about what goes into the freezer.

Fresh Sheep's Head mushrooms are surprisingly hardy during the washing process. You can really grab them, swish them about and be agressive. They will not fall apart like most other mushrooms.
We want to tear apart the pieces into manageable sizes while swishing about.
Keep the agitation going the whole time. After a couple of minutes take out the chunks and put them in a strainer, dump out the bowl of dirty water, clean the bowl, add fresh cold water and agitate, tear and clean again.
I do it three times. Each time about 2 or 3 minutes of roughhouse cleaning.
We do not want to soak them but on the other hand we will not be overly concerned about using water to clean them. These babies can withstand it.

I know. You're thinking using water like this to clean a mushroom is a befouling. I would agree that with most any other species that would be true but these babies take it well and final product turns out great.

Once they are all cleaned to your satisfaction let them stand in the strainer to drain. Nothing rigid as far as time is concerned but about 5 minutes will do.
Put the scraps in a pot and simmer on med-low heat. We want to cook down any liquid that is in the pot from being washed and any liquid that cooks out of the scraps.

We want to simmer until there is just a little bit of liquid remaining in the pot. That liquid is good stuff.
The amount of time this takes is dependent on the heat setting you use and the amount of mushroom scraps in the pot.
In the time it takes for the liquid to be reduced the mushrooms will have simmered long enough to just about be in a good enough stage to be frozen.

Now that the liquid is just where we want it to be it's time to add a half stick of butter. Turn up the heat briefly so the butter melts and simmer just a bit longer to evenly distribute the butter/liquid mixture among all the scraps - stirring and flipping while the simmering takes place.

I like to put a daily portion into 'Snack Bags' before putting the sealed 'snack bags' into a 'Freezer Bag'.
Daily portion amounts depend on personnal preference.
In our house the wife avoids wild mushrooms ( she says she trusts me but is afraid of allergies. That's what I always hear no matter kind of mushrooms I bring home. She probably has seen too many Columbo episodes ) therefore it is pretty much just me that enjoys them so I keep the portions to a size that I can handle.
I can always take out two bags at a clip if I want.

Here are the seven snack bags in two different freezer bags. Easy to remove a bag at a time when wanted.

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