Croatian wild dried boletus or porcini has arrived in our ISTRA Truffle shop. Dried boletus are often listed as an essential ingredient of many chefs around the world. Especially if you cook Asian or European cuisines you will appreciate and enjoy its exceptionally concentrated aroma and versatile in usage. Dried boletus mushrooms add a strong flavor to rice, pasta, soups, and sauces.
The porcini mushroom is known as a meaty mushroom with a rich taste and woodsy flavor. Croatians call them vrganji, French refer to them affectionately as cèpes, the Germans glorify them as Steinpilz, and the Italians are wild about their porcini. The Swedish refer to their treasures as stensopp. In Poland, borowik are canned and sold in the market. The Russians claim byelii-greeb sustained them during wartime when other food was not available. In this country, boletus is sometimes called “king bolete.” (1)
Due to the expense and complications of trying to cultivate a mushroom with a specific tree, there has been little success, so boletus are always collected from the wild, making them uncommon and expensive in supermarkets. Boletus can be pricy, but in return they pack a lot of flavor and healthy nutrition on their own. Boletus, similar to truffles, grows in symbiotic with certain trees. This is good news for every mushroom hunter – boletus will recur in the same places each year.
Boletus is most commonly found in pine forests. They can also be found in close association with other trees like Spruce, Pines, Hemlock, Oaks and Birch, although you will most likely locate different boletus variants or species. Around 40% of Croatia’s land is forested and covered with pines what makes it perfect natural host for magnificent Boletus mushrooms. Croatians sometimes eat them fresh, but mostly collect them for later drying. Yes, they are better dried than fresh. What is actually even more important – we can enjoy in dried boletus through whole year.
Did you know: To make 1 Kilogram of dried boletus it is necessary to collect around 25 Kilogram of fresh boletus mushrooms. Plenty of working hours in the forest need to be spent in order to bring wild delicacy on food lovers’ table.
Reference
(1) Retrieved from http://www.mssf.org