A fresh mushroom is 85–90% water held inside cell walls. Freeze it raw and that water expands into ice crystals that puncture the walls from the inside; on thawing, the structure has nothing left to hold it up and you get something limp, grey and weeping. This is not a technique problem you can solve with a better freezer — it is physics, and the answer is to cook the water out before freezing.
Sear the mushrooms as you normally would: hot dry pan, single layer, until the water is gone and the edges are browning, then a little butter or oil. Cool them completely, spread on a tray to freeze individually, then bag. Six months, and they go into a pan straight from frozen. This is the right method for oyster, shiitake, chestnut and beech.
Everything chopped fine, cooked down hard with shallot and butter until it is a dark, dry paste, seasoned, then spread thin in a freezer bag and frozen flat. Break off what you need. Nine months, and it improves any dish it touches — pasta, toast, pie filling, under chicken skin, into a sauce. If you only ever learn one thing to do with tired mushrooms, learn this.
Whole or halved mushrooms cooked slowly in oil or butter at low heat until tender, then frozen in the fat. King trumpet and maitake take this well. The fat protects the surface, and you get something close to a whole mushroom back.
Never thaw before cooking. Frozen cooked mushrooms go straight into a hot pan; thawing first just gives the water somewhere to pool.
Vegetable guides recommend blanching before freezing, and for mushrooms it is the worst of both worlds — you add water to something you are trying to dry out, and the texture still suffers. Dry heat, always.
Unnecessary. Properly dried mushrooms in a sealed jar keep a year at room temperature. Freezer space is better spent on duxelles.
The alternative to freezing anything is not needing to: drying is cheaper on space and keeps longer, and the Share sizes a box to a week so there is no surplus to manage.
You can, but you should not. Ice crystals rupture the cell walls and the thawed mushroom is limp, grey and watery. Cook them first — sautéed, as duxelles, or confit.
Sautéed mushrooms about six months; duxelles up to nine because there is so little water left. Both cook straight from frozen.
No. Blanching adds water to an ingredient whose problem is water, and it does not protect the texture. Use dry heat instead.
No — put them straight into a hot pan. Thawing lets the water pool and gives you a steamed result.
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