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Award-winning chef, author and forager Alan Bergo. Food is all around you.

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Hen of the Woods Fritters

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Hen of the woods mushroom fritters recipe

If you’re long on mushroom duxelles, these make a great appetizer to pass around with your favorite sauce.

If you hunt hen of the woods, you’ve probably had the problem of not knowing what to do with large-sized hens that pop up during the season. Hens are the best young, but it’s easier said than done to get them at that perfect, tender, button stage.

Thankfully, and in some ways unfortunately, they stay perfectly edible through most of their life, and don’t get near as woody as chicken of the woods with age from my experience.

When you find that big pig hen though, and you take it home, having some go-to tricks can turn cooking with them from a repetitive chore into a breeze.

These cakes were born out of necessity for me one year coming up with apps for a dinner where my budget was slim, and I needed to gather as many things as possible myself to keep a tight food cost, and a healthy profit. After a great hen of the woods harvest in the fall, I had plenty of duxelles in the freezer.

A recipe for hen of the woods mushroom frittersA mushroom duxelles derivitive recipe 

Mushroom duxelles are a great way to preserve just about any mushroom, and with hens in particular, it helps to cut down on the sheer size of the mushroom pile you’re looking at, and can be stored a lot easier than cooked mushrooms.

Duxelles can be mushed flat in a bag for quick thawing, frozen in ice cub trays and popped out-there’s lots of creative storage techniques you could dream up for keeping a frozen paste of mushroom concentrate.

Even so, if you duxelles a 10 lb hen, you’re going to have *a lot* of duxelles, so traditional duxelles recipes may not help you use up as many as you’d like at a time. You need something that burns through them, and making little fried cakes of pure mushroom is a great way to do that.

I serve these as tender little canapes that eat a bit like crabcakes, but they could easily be make into delicate burgers, little rolled sausages, or even thin, crisp cakes like traditional latkes.

To sweeten the deal, I like to serve them with caramelized onion sour cream, (just think top the tater dip) and maybe a little chopped dill as an appetizer, but they’d be just as at home for breakfast as a substitute for sausage, or baked into some tomato sauce like breaded eggplant.

A recipe for hen of the woods mushroom fritters

A recipe for hen of the woods mushroom fritters
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Hen of the Woods Mushroom Fritters

Crispy cakes made from wild hen of the woods mushrooms
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time20 mins
Course: Appetizer, Snack
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Fritter, Hen of the woods mushroom

Equipment

  • Heavy pan, like cast iron

Ingredients

  • 1 lb mushroom duxelles made from hen of the woods
  • Zest of half a lemon
  • 1 tablespoon fresh chopped thyme
  • 1/2 cup all purpose flour
  • 2 large eggs + 1 yolk
  • A couple good cracks of the pepper mill
  • Kosher salt to taste (this will depend on how much salt you put in your duxelles)
  • 2 tablespoons high quality grated parmesan cheese optional
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • Flavorless oil or lard for cooking

Instructions

  • Combine all ingredients and mix well. Portion the cakes into whatever size and thickness you like, then lay them out on parchment or wax paper to prevent sticking.
  • Fry until golden on each side, and serve immediately.
  • These are excellent with flavored sour cream.

Notes

For tiny finger food, this will yield 28 cakes measured with a loose tablespoon or roughly 15 grams each 

More 

Hen of the Woods or Maitake Mushroom

Related

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Next Post: How to Cut up a Rabbit »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ilonka Montgomery

    November 6, 2021 at 3:54 pm

    Hi, I’m very interested in this recipe but it calls for duxelles but I don’t know how to make them and can’t find it in this recipe.
    Is there a separate recipe for that?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      November 7, 2021 at 7:57 am

      The duxelles is linked in the post. I also added a new link in the recipe. duxelles

      Reply

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Alan Bergo
I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. You tak I made vegan fish sauce from ramp juice. 

You take the pure juice of the leaves, mix it with salt, Koji rice, and more chopped fresh ramp leaves, then ferment it for a bit. 

After the fermentation you put it into a dehydrator and cook it at 145-150 F for 30 days. 

The slow heat causes a Maillard/browning reaction over time. 

After 30 days you strain the liquid and bottle it. It’s the closest thing to plant-based fish sauce I’ve had yet. 

The potency of ramps is a pretty darn good approximation of the glutamates in meat. But you could prob make something similar with combinations of other alliums. 

The taste is crazy. I get toasted ramp, followed by mellow notes from the fermentation. Potent and delicate at the same time. 

I’ve been using it to make simple Japanese-style dipping sauces for tempura etc. 

Pics: 
2: Ramp juice 
3: Juicy leaf pulp 
4: Squeezing excess juice from the pulp
5: After 5 days at 145F 
6: After 30 days 
7: Straining through Muslin to finish

#ramps #veganfishsauce #experimentalfood #kojibuildscommunity #fermentation #foraging
Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Oeufs de Gaulle is a classic morel recipe Jacques Pepin used to make for French president Charles de Gaulle. 

You bake eggs in a ramekin with shrimp topped with creamy morel sauce and eat with toast points. 

Makes for a really special brunch or breakfast. Recipe’s on my site, but it’s even better to watch Jacques make it on you tube. 

#jacquespepin #morels #shrimp #morilles #brunchtime
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
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