The traditional winter salads, without which not a single festive New Year's table can do - olivier and herring under a fur coat - are certainly delicious, but a good housewife always wants to surprise the guests with something more original. For this purpose, not so well-known, but no less worthy salad, known as “Mushroom basket” (in some interpretations - “Mushroom meadow”, “Mushroom basket” or “Forest meadow”) is perfect for this purpose. About which ingredients, except mushrooms, can go into such a basket, how to properly “collect” it with a detailed step-by-step recipe and other useful tips - below in the review.
Selection and preparation of ingredients
The beauty of the salad in question is that it can be prepared from almost any ingredients - it all depends on the tastes and preferences of a particular hostess, as well as her imagination. The main idea of the snack is its design. “Lukoshko” is a puff vegetable or meat salad with the obligatory presence of whole mushrooms, which first fits into a deep form, and before serving it is turned onto a flat dish - the so-called changeling salad.
Did you know? In most European countries, in particular, in Belgium, Germany, France, Italy and Sweden, honey mushrooms are considered inedible, but the Slavic peoples (Ukrainians, Poles, Belarusians, Bulgarians, Russians) attribute these mushrooms to some of the most delicious.
In this case, the mushroom layer should always be on top. Thus, the appearance in appearance should resemble mushrooms laid in a round basket or growing in a clearing (if chopped greens is the second layer). It is advisable to choose a container for laying ingredients so that after putting all the ingredients into it it is filled to the top, otherwise the culinary masterpiece may crumble before serving.
An alternative option for assembling the “Mushroom basket” is the use of special rings for side dishes and salads. But such a device is not in every house, and its use requires certain experience and skills. In order for the complex structure not to crumble, mayonnaise is usually used as a binder sauce. It is better, of course, to cook it yourself - then the taste and nutritional value of the snack will greatly benefit.
As for mushrooms, pickled honey mushrooms are usually used for appetizers, because they look very bright and appetizing, and in addition, they are small and convenient to use whole. But a noble forest mushroom can be replaced with ordinary champignon. In this case, it is important to simply select smaller instances. Otherwise, the hostess has a large selection of ingredients.
In essence, any product that is used in olivier is suitable for a “onion basket": boiled vegetables, pickled cucumbers, and various types of meat - boiled, smoked, or fried, are perfectly combined with pickled mushrooms. You can put chicken, beef, tongue, ham or even dairy sausage in the salad. Perhaps the only exception is seafood: there is nothing to do with shrimps or crayfish in a basket with mushrooms, although fusion culinary enthusiasts may try to combine the incompatible.
Recipes for the salad "Mushroom basket"
As examples of snacks, below are four different recipes for making it:
- classic salad with pickled mushrooms and boiled chicken breast;
- “Lite” salad with honey mushrooms and ham without potatoes under homemade mayonnaise;
- gourmet's dream is an appetizer with two kinds of meat;
- "Mushroom basket" with Korean carrots and mushrooms.
The technology for assembling salads is also provided for different - in the culinary ring and the method of "shifter".
Classic recipe with honey mushrooms
1200 g2 hours
processed cheese "Friendship"
1 PC.
fresh dill
10-12 stems
ground black pepper
1 tsp
Nutritional value per 100 g:
- Put the chicken meat in boiling water, carefully remove the foam, reduce the heat, cook for 30 minutes, then remove from heat and allow to cool completely, without removing it from the water. To get the most tender meat, it is better to put it in hot water, add cold chicken if you want to achieve a rich and beautiful broth.
- Cook root vegetables without peeling, let cool (it is better to leave the carrots in the water in which it was cooked), peel, cut into cubes, or, if desired, grate.
- Chop greens.
- Pour eggs with cold water, salt, cook for 10 minutes from the moment of boiling, then place in cold water, cool, only then peel and crumble or rub - by analogy with root crops.
- Rinse the mushrooms thoroughly to remove excess vinegar and let the liquid drain completely.
- Fill honey agarics with oil, knead, let stand for at least 1.5 hours.
- Grate cream cheese on a coarse grater.
- Cut the cucumbers in the same slices as the vegetables.
- Place the cooking ring on a flat plate.
- Put potatoes on the bottom of the ring. Salt a little salt, pepper, sprinkle with vegetable oil.
- In the same way, lay the carrots, alternately pickled cucumbers, followed by a layer of crumbled eggs. Lubricate each layer with a small amount of mayonnaise, or, if you want to get a less high-calorie and heavy dish, drizzle with vegetable oil.
- Lay chicken, salt, and again grease with French sauce.
- The penultimate layer is grated cheese.
- Sprinkle abundantly with the green inside the ring - first with green onions, then dill. Leave a little green for further decoration.
- Carefully remove the ring. To teaspoon false, coat the sides of the salad with mayonnaise, then, slightly raising the plate and scrolling it around its axis, sprinkle the remaining greens on the sides.
- Again, discard mushrooms in a colander, let the vegetable oil drain completely.
- Arbitrarily lay mushrooms on the surface of the "structure" of vegetables, eggs, meat and greens in such a way as to give the dish the appearance of a green onion filled with honey mushrooms.
- Serve appetizer immediately.
Important! Store mushrooms may be too acidic, which upsets the balanced taste of the finished dish. Therefore, experts recommend that you first try the mushrooms and, if necessary, rinse them with water or even soak for 30 minutes.
With ham and honey mushrooms
1200 g2 hours
hard cheese "Russian"
100 g
Nutritional value per 100 g:
- Discard mushrooms in a colander, if desired - rinse under running water, let the liquid drain.
- Make mayonnaise. Take two raw eggs, separate the yolks from the proteins. Beat the yolks thoroughly with a whisk or a hand blender. Continuing to beat, add mustard, a pinch of salt and sugar. Then pour in a thin stream of olive oil (can be replaced with sunflower oil) and beat until the substance becomes like mayonnaise and starts pestering the whisk or knives of the blender. At the end, lighten the mayonnaise by adding lemon juice.
- Boil the remaining eggs hard, peel, grate on a coarse grater.
- Hard cheese also grate.
- Cut ham and cucumbers into small cubes.
- Peel the onions, cut into thin half rings. If desired, can be marinated in vinegar.
- Chop green onions not very finely, cutting the feather a bit diagonally.
- Put mushrooms on the bottom of a deep pot or dish.
- Sprinkle mushrooms with green onions, grease with a thin layer of mayonnaise.
- Lay the following layers in turn, greasing each with mayonnaise. The sequence is arbitrary, but it is better to stick to this: ½ part of eggs, cucumbers, cheese, ham, remaining eggs.
- Cover the dishes, refrigerate. The minimum exposure time is 1 hour, optimal for the whole night.
- Before serving, cover the container with a flat dish, carefully turn it over. The edges of the salad plate can be decorated with parsley or other herbs to taste, which is better not to chop for these purposes, but to leave with branches, so that it seems that the “basket” has just been brought from the forest.
Did you know? Raymond Blanc, chef of the restaurant at the British hotel Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat ’Saisons, gotovit withThe most expensive salad in the world "Florette Sea & amp; Earth" (Floret - sea and land), worth 800 euros per serving. AT The composition of the dish includes truffles, beluga game, as well as other sea delicacies, including lobster, spiny lobster and Cornish crabs.
With pork, chicken and honey mushrooms
1100-1200 g1 hour
smoked chicken breast
50 g
boneless lean pork
100 g
sweet canned corn
100 g
seedless olives
10-15 pcs.
Nutritional value per 100 g:
- Drain mushrooms from the marinade, rinse under running water, put on a paper towel folded into several layers, allow to dry completely.
- Peel the onion, cut into thin half rings, spasser in olive oil until a characteristic caramel aroma appears.
- Boil potatoes, peel, crumble in a small cube.
- Cut olives in circles.
- Grate cream cheese on a coarse grater.
- Boil pork in slightly salted water, cut into small slices.
- Grind smoked chicken breast in the same way as pork.
- Discard the corn in a colander and wait for the liquid to drain.
- Rub the cucumbers on a coarse grater, gently squeeze out with your hands (cucumber juice can be used to prepare a face mask).
- Chop dill as finely as possible.
- Lay a deep plate with cling film, it will keep the salad from losing shape during subsequent turning.
- Put mushrooms at the bottom of the plate, sprinkle with dill on top.
- Lay all the ingredients alternately, spreading each layer with mayonnaise and, if desired, slightly salting those foods that do not have salt. Since most of the components of the salad are quite salty, you can not add salt to it, which is why salt is not listed in the list of ingredients. Recommended sequence: cheese, chicken, cucumbers, corn, pork, sauteed onions, olives, potatoes.
- Tighten the dish on top with cling film and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
- Before serving, remove the top layer of the film, cover the dish with a flat plate, turn it over, and then carefully remove the remaining film. Serve immediately.
Important! Salads that use fresh cucumbers instead of pickled or salted tend to “swim” and lose shape quickly. Therefore, you should not cook them in advance and leave to insist all night, it is best to collect such dishes immediately before serving with the culinary ring.
With champignons
1100-1200 g5 hours
pickled champignons
200 g
pickled cucumber
2 pcs.
olive or sunflower oil
70 ml
ground black pepper
1 tsp
apple or white wine vinegar
30 ml
chili pepper (optional)
½ pcs
Nutritional value per 100 g:
- Without peeling the potatoes, put them in slightly salted boiling water and cook until almost done, carefully making sure that the tuber does not crack or boil. Remove from water, allow to cool, peel, then rub or finely chop. The method of slicing potatoes will determine the texture of the finished salad: in the first case, it will be more tender, but in the second, each ingredient is better felt.
- Put the chicken breast in a pan with boiling water, bring to a boil again, remove the foam, boil for 5 minutes, remove from heat, cover and let the chicken meat cool completely completely in the broth. Boiled chicken in this way turns out to be very soft, tender and does not break up into fibers, as in the case if you cook it in the traditional way.
- Cut the carrots with a special knife for cooking Korean carrots or, if there is no such knife in the household, rub on a coarse grater.
- Peel the onion.
- Cut one onion very finely, as for a risotto, and fry in vegetable oil.
- Cut the remaining three onions into thin half rings, add vinegar or lemon juice and let stand for 15–20 minutes.
- Chili pepper cut across into 2 parts, remove seeds, finely chop the flesh. Work with hot pepper should be in rubber gloves to protect the skin of the hands. If there are no gloves, it is very important not to wash your hands after pepper, but wipe them thoroughly with a dry towel (in reaction with water, pepper burns the skin much more strongly).
- Pour sugar, a little salt, ground coriander, chili pepper, and vegetable oil, in which the onion was fried, into the chopped carrots. Stir well, let it brew for at least 30 minutes. The dish will turn out even more delicious if you pickle carrots in the evening. If you don’t have time and desire to do this, you can buy a ready-made carrot in Korean. Fried onions are not added to the salad, it only gives its flavor to the oil.
- Throw the pickled mushrooms into a colander, let the marinade drain completely. Select copies of the same size - the smaller they are, the more beautiful and elegant the resulting snack will be.
- Finely chop the greens with a knife.
- Grate cheese on a coarse grater.
- Chicken breast and pickled cucumbers cut into cubes of the same size.
- Grease the bottom of a deep round pan with vegetable oil.
- Put the mushrooms in the prepared form with the legs up, pressing each champignon to the next one, so that the layer is as dense and subsequently does not crumble.
- Sprinkle generously with chopped herbs.
- Put grated potatoes on top of the greens, lightly salt, pepper and grease with mayonnaise.
- Lay in the following layers in order: pickled cucumbers, boiled chicken, pickled onions, carrots, grated cheese. Lubricate each layer with a small amount of mayonnaise for a bunch.
- Put the “collected” lettuce in the refrigerator for 2 hours, having previously covered it with a lid.
- Immediately before serving, place a large flat plate with the bottom upside down on the pan instead of the lid, turn it over quickly, gently tap on the bottom and sides of the pan so that the contents are completely separated from the walls and then remove the pan, leaving the “flip” on the plate.
“Mushroom basket” for a good housewife is not a specific salad recipe, but a general idea, on the basis of which you can cook many different dishes that are similar to each other in appearance, but radically different in composition, taste, nutrition and calorie content.
It is not necessary to add meat to such an appetizer, even without this important and expensive component, it turns out to be very satisfying, tasty and self-sufficient. And the original and elegant presentation will make such a dish a real “highlight” on any holiday table and, no doubt, will be remembered by the guests.
