Preparing procedure

Almost all the boletus in China are picked, cleaned, selected and dried by the home-based units which are run by the farmers in the areas that are very close to the collection points. The reasons for this are that the shelf life of fresh boletus edulis is only 24 hours, and fresh boletus must be processed and dried as soon as possible.

Selecting 

By the employees of the home-based drying unit, usually supervised by our staff. The main objective of this step is to eliminate the foreign mushrooms, and some bad ones, like the ones with too many worm holes.

Cleaning

By the employees of the home-based drying unit, usually supervised by our staff. Wash the selected boletus off the dirt and mud with water.

Drying

The fresh boletus is dried with woods. The most popular drying equipment in China is something like a cupboard with many bamboo drawers. Put the fresh into the drawers, close it, and light a fire with wood beneath the open bottom of the cupboard. The drying process for a batch of 200 kg fresh takes around 6 hours.

The dryers being used are usually home-made by the farmers, and the drying process is controlled by the experienced humans rather than the electronic equipments. The water content that is regulated is max. 12% by our customers. We usually can keep it as low as 11% for safe.

Home base wooden dryer

Sorting and grading

Sorting and grade are done in our factory. 

Boletus dried sorting in our factory

The basic quality requirements are:

Then, based on the quality baseline as above, the dried boletus are graded as:

Grade A: Complete mushroom, complete rounded top, complete stem, worm free, color white, diameter 3 cm up.

Grade B: the same as above except not more than 4 worm holes/slice.

Grade C: Incomplete mushroom, not more than 8 worm holes/slice

Grade A, B, C (from left to right)