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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Boletus Pallidus

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in MinnesotaHere’s a great mushroom to keep your eyes peeled for when the boletes start popping: Boletus pallidus or the pallid bolete. You don’t hear about it much, and it took me a number of years just to find them, but now that I have a couple spots to check after a good, hard rain comes where I live in Minnesota I’ve improved my odds, and have been able to get a good enough number of them to warrant reccomending them.

Pallidus, like the name implies, has a pallor to it, not in the sense of looking sickly, but having a sort of paleness, lack of color, or strictly having colors that are tame and muted, in my opinion.

I first learned about them when my good friend Mike, (who also wrote this great book here) brought a bag with him to give me when I opened my first restaurant, the Salt Cellar. I was grateful for the nice bag of perfect boletes, but I adnitedly I was also just a little jealous I hadn’t found them myself.

I lucked out the next year after we had a couple nice days of rain in Northern Minnesota. A fruitless hunt for saffron milkcaps turned into a hunt for Leccinum subglabripes, and while I was scouring one of the new patches I’d found, I saw a couple pale looking boletes.

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota

In the Field

Immediately I knew it was pallidus, and, if you’re a hunter whose been looking for something new and finally found it, you know the excitement that comes with that. The patch was a good one, and I’ve been able to come back just about every year in the middle of summer when the boletes come up in earnest. Here’s a few points on Boletus pallidus, which I recommend cross-referencing with a guide or something like mushroomexpert.com.

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota

Habitat

I find mine in the northwoods of Minnesota, specifically mixed woods with oaks, aspen, conifers, maple and birch. They seem to enjoy the same type of habitat that leccinum subglabripes and a number of other boletes, some conifer loving. As other resources have pointed out though, the pallidus seems to be (and was definitely in my case) mycorhyzal/symbiotic with oak, and If I remember correctly, Northern Red Oak.

ID Characteristics

The hardest part for me wasn’t ID’ing them, since I was primed to see them, the hardest part was just getting to them at the right place and time. That being said, there’s a couple different things that set them apart from other similar looking boletes.

Pallid

They’re pale, overall looking a bit void of color. This is pretty self-explanitory.

“Olive-colored pores”

I don’t know what type of olives mycologists were thinking of when they came up with this Identification characteristic, but it’s a little confusing. What they mean is a type of yellow that may fade to greenish with age, from what I can gather.

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota

The pores will bruise blue when cut or intentionally bruised. It’s hard to pick out the yellowish/olive color of the pores, since mine were relatively young in this picture, but it’s there, albeit slight.

Blue/grey staining and red stem colorations

The pores will stain blue/grey, slowly. Now the confusing part, the flesh may stain slowly, or not at all. For reference, mine haven’t been staining except with the pores, which you’ll see in the picture below. Also take a look at the bottom portion of the stem and the red/brown coloration. Apparently the red/brown can be present or absent, which is a bit confusing, but not as confusing as blewits!

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota
Note that the pores stain gently blue/grey, but the flesh does not.
Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota
Note the absence of staining. The red on the stem may be present or absent.

Cooking

For me, these have been ok fresh, not as good as porcini, but not ho-hum like a slippery jack, so to speak. That being said they seemed to have a greater resistance to bugs, which is always great. Like most of the boletes I pick, these go straight into the dehydrator, but unfortunately, after drying, they’re flavor could, be better, they definitely aren’t up to par with a any porcini type mushroom or leccinum, which are probably my two favorite types of boletes.

I do like cooking boletes fresh on occasion, but the flavor is so much stronger dried that I find it disspointing to cook them fresh sometimes. That, combined with the fact that generally when these are fruiting there are many other mushrooms to pick and eat fresh that are quite good that don’t need or like drying, add to my reccomendation to dry them.

Boletus pallidus mushrooms harvested in Minnesota

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Got treated to a home cooked meal of big lamb meat Got treated to a home cooked meal of big lamb meatballs from the Icelandic lambs @shepherdsongfarm gave us. 

It’s been a while since I had fist-size meatballs. They reminded me of dinners I had with Grandpa at Yarussos in St. Paul, where you got one meatball to rule them all on top of your spaghetti and red gravy. 

Obv I had to make some with venison, wild rice, ramps, and bergamot. The wild rice is fun. Hefty. 

Also forgot to oil my hands, like a chump. 🙄

#ballingonabudget #meatballs #naptime #venison #rampleaves #comfortfoods #rusticfood #monardafistulosa
Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun var Tres Leches soaked in candy cap milk was a fun variation I did on the house dessert of a little restaurant I was at for a time. 

Don’t be surprised if you smell like maple syrup a few hours after eating it. Using ground dried golden chanterelles is another variation that’s on my list to try. 

Link in bio to see how to make your own. 

#candycaps #treslechescake #myteethfellout #wildmushrooms #wildfoodlove
ARISE #fungimancer #frostbite #morels #tisthes ARISE 

 #fungimancer 
#frostbite #morels #tistheseason #mushroomhunting #winter #offseasontraining
Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your suppo Big thanks🙏 to all of you who showed your support with the first line of spirits @ida_graves_distillery and I collaborated on. 

Brock did a great job wrangling the wild things, and we have plenty of fun ideas in store (think aging nocino in barrels, new flavor combos, etc). If you’re in the Twin Cities and still need some, the amaro is #soldout but @ombibulousmn has nocino, and should have the spruce  liquor (goes down like pine gin) soon. Thank you!

#distillery #foragedcocktails #nocino #craftspirits #drinkatree #mnspirits #smallbatch #godscountry
Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too s Let’s talk roadkill. Honestly, roadkill is too specific a term for me—I don’t limit myself to vehicular-harvested meat. 

However you feel about the topic, grab some popcorn and head over to the comment section on my blog (link in bio) for the 🔥personal stories from readers have shared from around the world. 

There’s the kid who brought home a nutria after school, a wife getting 4 deer with the same car, a train hitting a herd of elk, a bear named squish, living in a house with weasels, and more. 

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Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberr Sam Thayer dropped 25 lbs of his highbush cranberry cultivars (3 types!) on me before the last snowfall and I honestly don’t even know where to start after processing them. I’d already made jams and hot sauce already and I have enough for a year. 😅

Great time to practice the cold-juice which ensures the juice isn’t bitter. 

Anyone else have any ideas? 

You can still find some on the shrubs if the birds didn’t get them up by the north shore. 

#highbushcranberry #winterforaging #birdberries #sweetnectar #foragerproblems #juiceme #embarassmentofriches #wildfoodlove
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