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Vegetables from Russia, Ukraine, Romania and Lithuania

Salt-fermented mushrooms (Eastern Europe)соленые грузди (salted gruzdi)

Wild mushrooms, above all milk caps (Lactarius), are salted and fermented for the winter, sometimes with leaves and seeds as seasoning. Bitter milk caps need special preparation first. A Polish laboratory study ferments saffron milk caps in a light brine for 3 days warm and 14 days cold.

Fully documentedVegetables17 days

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedTraditional household practice with no fixed amounts in the sources read.
Wild mushrooms, mainly milk caps (Lactarius) and Russula[stryamets2023][motiejunaite2024]
Salt[stryamets2023]
Horseradish leaves and root, oak leaves and blackcurrant leavesUsed to season fermented mushrooms in Pskov Oblast[belichenko2021]
Caraway seedUsed to season salted mushrooms in Pskov Oblast[belichenko2021]

Total time across the recorded steps: 17 days

Start
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What changes: Starting material: wild milk caps and other mushrooms, sorted and cleaned

Step 1 of 5
Sort and clean the mushrooms
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Wild mushrooms, above all milk caps (Lactarius), are salted and fermented for the winter, sometimes with leaves and seeds as seasoning. Bitter milk caps need special preparation first. A Polish laboratory study ferments saffron milk caps in a light brine for 3 days warm and 14 days cold. Made in 5 steps over 17 days. The longest step, keep cold to ripen (laboratory version), takes 14 days (Venugopal K 2025) and runs at 4–6 °C (Venugopal K 2025). Salt is 2 % (Venugopal K 2025). Lactococci, which predominated in spontaneously fermented saffron milk caps in a Polish laboratory study does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step14 daysReported[venugopal2025]Keep cold to ripen (laboratory version)
Temperature4–6 °CReported[venugopal2025]Keep cold to ripen (laboratory version)
Salt2 %Reported[venugopal2025]Ferment until sour (laboratory version)
AciditypH up to 4.5Reported[venugopal2025]Ferment until sour (laboratory version)

What makes this one different

Unlike vegetable ferments, the main raw material is wild milk caps, and the bitter kinds must be prepared before salting. The laboratory version ferments the caps in a light brine with added sugar.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Boiled honey fungus with cabbageBoiled honey fungus (Armillaria mellea) is layered with cabbage and fermented through the winter among Hutsuls and Romanians in Ukraine.

Safety

Salt only mushrooms you can identify with certainty. In a Lithuanian survey, five respondents knew of four poisoning cases, all from Gyromitra esculenta, a toxic mushroom that needs special preparation (Motiejūnaitė 2024). The authors call poisonings very rare among respondents and do not say those mushrooms were salted. In Ukrainian surveillance data from three periods between 1955 and 2018, canned mushrooms were the food in 13 % of botulism cases with a known food, and in 3.54 % in the last period, 2017–2018 (Semenko 2021); that study covers canned, not salted, mushrooms. The one fermentation study read (Venugopal et al. 2025) blanched saffron milk caps, fermented them in a 2 % salt brine until the pH was 4.5 or lower, then kept them at 5 °C. It counted lactic bacteria only, so its figures do not show that any salt level, pH or storage time is safe for traditionally salted milk caps.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

In Lithuania, salting and fermenting mushrooms mattered most in times of scarcity and has now nearly disappeared, along with the bitter milk caps that needed it (Motiejūnaitė et al. 2024).

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
  1. [venugopal2025] Venugopal K., Satora P., Kała K. et al. 2025, Fermented, Freeze-Dried Snacks from Lactarius deliciosus as a Source of Functional Compounds and Lactic Acid Bacteria, Molecules 30(7):1566paper
  2. [stryamets2023] Stryamets N., Mattalia G., Pieroni A. and Sõukand R. 2023, Dissimilar ethnomycological perspectives among Hutsuls and Romanians living across the Ukrainian-Romanian border, Environmental Management 72:363–381paper
  3. [belichenko2021] Belichenko O., Kolosova V., Melnikov D., Kalle R. and Sõukand R. 2021, Language of Administration as a Border, wild food plants used by Setos and Russians in Pechorsky District of Pskov Oblast, NW Russia, Foods 10(2):367paper
  4. [motiejunaite2024] Motiejūnaitė J., Džekčioriūtė V., Kutorga E., Kasparavičius J. and Iršėnaitė R. 2024, Diversity of ethnomycological knowledge and mushroom foraging culture in a small nation, case of Lithuania, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 20:88paper
  5. [semenko2021] Semenko N. et al. 2021, Foodborne botulism in Ukraine from 1955 to 2018, Foodborne Pathogens and Diseasepaper