Show us your foraged mushroom finds!!

A conversation about mushrooms popped up in the cider forum, i though why not get something going over here where it belongs. This year i got 4 chicken mushrooms, a sponge/cauliflower mushroom, loads and loads of boletus badius (last photo), and a few boletus edulis / porcini / king bolete, one of which was a whopper at 600 g. As well as shaggy manes, gem studded puffballs. The season is in full swing so i expect more!

This fall, we got a few oyster mushrooms and a few shaggy manes on our property. That's it!

boletus badius beer stew:
start the stew by frying whatever veg you like in some butter: carrot, celery, onion, etc. add fresh thyme and bay leaves, black pepper. when they're soft dump in Beer! nothing too hoppy, go for malty. and maybe a stock cube. a good splash of malt vinegar or cider vinegar. let that cook for a while, at least 30 minutes, until the flavors get to know each other. cover and leave it for hours to slow cook if you can.
roughly slice the mushrooms, dust them in flower, heat butter until foaming subsides (or light oil), fry the mushys very hot until they start to brown, turn them to brown a little bit on all sides. grind some black pepper in there. dump in a good glug cheap whisky and flame it, take it off heat as the flame dies out. add this to the stew a few minutes before serving, with all its juices. the flour should thicken the sauce a little bit, if not then mix some flour in a bit of cold water (or beer) and add that in, let it cook for a minute to thicken. taste for salt. top with fresh parsley, and serve with an island of creamy mash potato or celeriac or something like that.
boletus badius harvest:

does anybody know a good reference for which wild mushrooms are edible?

where do you live? for north america try the classic National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms

although i should say, going out with a guide book is not a good strategy for beginners. going out with someone who knows, and learning 5 or 6 easy to identify species is your best bet for starting out. chicken mushroom, hen of the woods, oyster mushroom, shaggy mane, etc. then once you're home with them read about them in the book and learn the identifying features. avoid anything that has poisonous lookalikes until you are experienced

I'd like to have a vegetable garden but I'm surrounded by water and tall pine trees. The only thing that grows in my yard is fungi. Literally I ran over a couple of puff balls mowing my yard over the weekend. Actually had a moral spring up next to my hops in the springtime. I've failed in any type of vegetable so last spring I ordered some plugs from www.thymegarden.com (shiitake, oysters, mane, chicken). Takes about a year to see any progress but I checked a couple of logs yesterday and there's a couple of mushrooms peeking out. I was hoping to go big and have my brother who's a landscaper get me some big logs to innoculate but that's another story. Kinda small now but hopefully will get something next year. Somehow I think next year is going to be a war with the squirrels and chipmunks. Bring it on!

good luck. my parents had good success with shiitake plugs in logs
i like young gem-studded puffballs, but they are not the most exciting on the palate. love lion's mane
i was looking into growing oyster mushrooms on spent brewing grain, but haven't been convinced that it will be as easy as i had hoped. seems it will be too rich and too wet, but diluted out with straw or sawdust or coffee grounds might work well. if i had a garage or shed i would have a crack at it but in my apartment, it's not happening. i thought maybe shredded brewing supply boxes (i get everything in the post) and newspaper mixed 60:40 with spent grain, hung in plastic bags and inoculated with a high % of sterile-grown mycelium might do the trick. if anyone tries this let me know!!

really good year for porcini here

nice boletus up there. There will be tons of chanterelles at my college hopefully in the next week or two. The first rain of the season happened last week. Do you have any advice on drying mushrooms because there should be bags full of them there.

i only have experience drying boletus, which i do regularly. i slice a bit less than 1 cm thick and then either string them with a needle and thick thread, and staple gun them to the wall (ghetto) so they hang horizontally, or place the slices on an oven rack, leave in a warm place. ideally you would want warm, not hot, temperature and lots of air movement. i put them next to my water heater which is in a little closet. not much air movement but great warm temp 24/7, and they are dry in a few days. if i need to kickstart the process i put them in a 50C oven for a few hours first, but it's probably better to avoid that kind of heat. i love chantarelles but have never dried them

porcini and friends

the porcini are just pouring in!

another good year for the porcini here. pan-browned butternut squash, fried savoy cabbage, homemade sauerkraut, spiced stewed (foraged) pears, parsnip and onion puree, prune-sherry sauce, pan fried porcini (it was the one in the bottom picture). served with rauchbier.

We used to peel the puffballs & slice into serving size. Dip in egg wash & then seasoned flour. Fry on both sides till golden. they go really well with fried walley!

oh yeah i love puffballs. i prefer the "gem-studded" smaller ones to the giant ones, and agree they are better breaded/egg washed, otherwise they tend to be unimpressive. i made them a few times this year with a sort of tempura batter with garlic powder, and dipped in a garlicky soy saucey sort of thing, really good. the egg coating (as you know!) protects them from just soaking up all the oil, instead they steam inside and the texture is great. yum.

Yeah. Egg wash & breading improves the texture & flavor. We tried just frying them...came out like marshmallow. Breaded & fried is it!

that time of year again. horrible summer here, unless you're fungus. these porcini took me all of 3 minutes to collect, at my best spot

that was my best porcini day ever. the morning haul was 1.3 kg, and in the afternoon i found another 1 kg just across the street from my work. and i left all the little ones (for today's harvest). trying to remember what they charge for fresh porcini at the specialty market, something like 8-10 euros per 100g.....

banner year for boletus. i go on a hunt every three days or so, and in one week have hauled well over 7 kg. giving them out to everyone i know, eating lots, drying the rest. the obvious: risotto, creamy pasta. the less obvious: tempura, croquettes.
this is what was left of yesterday's find after i gave half away.