The original lions mane mushroom crab cake recipe was born on this site. This is one of my all-time favorites. I guarantee this is so good, some people may not be able to tell it's a crabcake made from mushrooms instead of crab.

If I get asked for my go-to recipe for Hericium / Lions mane mushrooms, crab cakes are usually the answer. Don't get me wrong, they're perfectly good sautéed and browned, but one of their best characteristics is their texture and flavor that resembles crab meat in a strangely pleasing way.
Sometimes mushrooms with different shapes, forms and textures can be challenging to cook in creative ways, but when they have a mild texture like crustaceans (shrimp of the woods are good too, but different) crab cakes are a tried and true crowd-pleaser that need to be in your repertoire.
The only problem can be finding enough of them to make into cakes, since you'll need at least a good pound to serve four people. I finally have a log that's producing pounds of Hericium coralloides mushrooms dependably.
These can be one of the more tricky wild mushrooms to find from my experience and most of the time if people aren't primed to look for them, they might just pass them by as just another strange looking tree growth.
Thankfully, one cake is so rich I don't even need to have meat alongside for a meal. When the time comes that you find a nice, multiple-pound clump (clusters over 50 lbs are possible!), do yourself a favor and make the lions mane crab cakes at least once. You deserve to make them, yes you do.
For the best texture, compress those cakes
Chefs Tips
They're easy to make, but there's a couple things to know about making mushroom cakes that will both hold up while cooking, and not be too tough.
- Don't get happy with the breadcrumbs or flour.
- Regular eggs here. I don't use jumbo sized eggs.
- Remember that Hericiums / lions mane mushrooms can hold a lot of water and the more you can remove before frying the finished mushroom cakes, the better (I squeeze it out after sweating them).
- Don't put a bunch of B.S. in your lions mane cakes, save your fake cheese, beans, or other obscenity for another day.
- For the chefs treat, put a fried egg on it.
- A chef trick is to use a ring mold the best shape, in a pinch just cut a plastic bottle to form a plastic ring about 2 inches tall by about 3 inches wide.
- Adding to #6, compacting the cakes also ensures a really meaty, solid cake, trust me here.
- Don't cook like a civilian. Double check your seasoning for herbs and salt, then before frying the cakes, check it again. It's not my fault if you don't know how to season your food, so don't complain that it's underseasoned. Capische?
- Golden. Brown. Crust. If I see any weak-looking, blonde, Bush-League cakes, you'll be on salad station faster than you can say potato peeler.
Lions Mane or Hericium Mushroom Crabcakes
Ingredients
Mushrooms
- 1 lb lions mane or other Hericium mushrooms
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons water
Cake mix
- ¼ cup minced scallion
- ¼ cup minced red bell pepper
- ½ cup panko breadcrumbs
- ¼ cup high fat mayonnaise
- 2 tablespoons chopped herbs like cilantro tarragon, or Italian parsley
- 1 tablespoon worcesterchire or similar I use mushroom ketchup
- 1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning optional, a mix of paprika, cayenne, and extra salt can be substituted
- 1 large egg
- Kosher salt to taste
Serving
- All purpose flour for dredging
- Flavorless oil for cooking the cakes
- Fresh green salad
- Dollop of spicy mayonnaise optional
- Fresh cut chives optional
- Lemon wedges
Instructions
Wilt the mushrooms and remove the water
- Pick the lions mane mushrooms into pieces to resemble crab meat. Put the mushrooms in a pan with the water and salt, cover and bring to a simmer, stir, cover, and cook for a few minutes until the mushrooms are wilted and have given up their juice.
- Allow the mushrooms to cool, then squeeze out as much water as you possibly can. This step is important as mushrooms, unlike crab, contain lots of water.
Mix with the crab cake mix
- Combine the mushrooms with the cake ingredients and mix well. Taste a bit of the mixture (you can cook it if raw egg weirds you out) adjust the seasoning for salt and anything else you’re looking for, then allow the crab cake mix to rest for at least 15 minutes to allow the breadcrumbs to hydrate, which will make forming the cakes easier. In a perfect world, you’ll let it sit overnight.
Cooking
- To cook the cakes, form 4 oz patties of the mixture (it will be delicate, don’t worry—the egg will set as they cook). For the most refined look, form the cakes using a ring mold.
- Heat a pan with a few tablespoons of oil.
- Heat an oven to 350F. Meanwhile, gently dredge the cakes in flour on both sides, tap off the excess, and brown gently on medium heat. When one side of the cakes are golden brown, gently flip the cakes and transfer the pan to the oven and cook until hot throughout, about 10 minutes.
Serving
- Remove the cakes to a plate with a fresh green salad, top with a dollop of spicy mayonnaise or aioli if using, sprinkle with chives and serve with lemon wedges on the side. The cakes are also excellent served on a bun like you would a burger.
Palate Jack
Chef, glad to see you're still engaged in your blog. And thanks for posting this recipe.
I have had Maryland crab cakes many times, and know they are subtle flavored with a balanced background of bell pepper, parsley, and green onion, not to overdo the delicate crab flavor. Got some gorgeous H. erinaceous from a local grower and looking for something different, found your "crab cakes" recipe. Wow! You nailed it. I followed your method exactly and they came out super-pro and a dead ringer for original crab cakes. I made ring molds out of a 12-liter selzter bottle using scissors, and they worked great. I also found tearing the mushrooms apart to small bits worked well.
Keep 'em coming!
Palate Jack
That should read '1-liter' bottle.
Alan Bergo
Hey there, glad they worked for you. Yes, I re-tooled these last year and I'm pretty pleased. They were good before, but now they're reaaaally good.
Sukhi
Just made these with some farmers market Lions Mane and wow!! So good!! Didn't have Old Bay so I used paprika, garlic powder, cayenne and salt. Served over kale and caramelized onions with some lemony mayo and flaky finishing salt. Thank you so much for the recipe. It was my first experience with Lions Mane - my world is opening up 🙂
Alan Bergo
Glad it worked for you.
Heidi
I just got my first Lion's Mane, well over 1 pound. Will these cakes keep if I make a big batch and freeze some before cooking? Excited to try the recipe!
Alan Bergo
Yes it will, but I much prefer them fresh.
BobKolasa
Just about to make some of these. Wife found a few pounds, back up in a MN North Shore State Park woods. Lots of maples! Been fairly wet of late up there. Should be a good year for Late summer/fall mushrooms.Hit the woods!
Because I’m certain I have more than the two of us can eat, I am going to wrap & freeze some of the cakes in parchment pieces, then a ziplock. Won’t dredge them in the (plain? other?) flour till I cook them. Comments? Thanks for such a great blog!
Dr. Bob
Alan Bergo
Sorry I was pokey getting back to you here-I was tied up overseas. Yes, that will work, and you wouldn't dredge them until you're ready to cook.
russell j belue
just got some h. coralloides and am about to attempt the crabcakes. We're in East TX. Thanks for such a wonderful site.
Alan Bergo
Enjoy.
Kevin H
Will try this recipe this week, as it’s just what I was looking for.
If you can’t find lions mane, try growing it yourself. I just tried for the first time and wow! I did eight grow bags with a pound each of hardwood sawdust and ground soy hulls (aka Masters Mix) with three pounds of water. Cooked the bags in a pressure cooker at 15 psi for two hours and then let cool. I inoculated them with lions mane on November 14. One bag is ready to harvest already on Dec 2, probably two to three pounds. Another looks like it should be ready next week.
Alan Bergo
I've been meaning to try growing some in the back 40.
Travis
I found about a kilo while hiking and made them into “crab”cakes. Delicious. A great recipe to showcase the mushrooms subtle flavours and more exciting than just frying them up.
Alan Bergo
Glad it worked for you.
G. Peyton Craighill
I’m happy to see this thread go on for so long, with you continuing to reply. Unusual, these days.
I’ve got a bit of lions mane that I picked yesterday in Rockbridge County, Va, and I’ll be serving it tomorrow night it alongside a fresh venison heart I earned yesterday, helping a friend gut a deer.
I make - often ???? - fantastic crab cakes. In the oven I can do pretty well making a lot. But here I’m cooking only for my wife and I, so proper execution of most anything is easy.
I’m cooking the heart tomorrow. I’m thinking Just cut into the three heart steaks, seasoned and seared, probably w a whiskey cream sauce. Do you think it’s worth it to have these crab cakes as a “turf and turf,” or should I just dry sauté them and serve on the side?
Alan Bergo
Hey G, I would make the crab cakes as a side if you haven't made them before, just to taste them. They're undoubtedly the most popular thing people make with Hericium. I love me some venison heart! Just had heart sliders with slices of backstrap and horseradish a few days ago.
tiffany s taylor
These are so good, I wonder if you could make the patties ahead of time and then cook them when ready to eat? Kids sports are making it hard to find a good amount of time to cook.
Charlene
This is such a great recipe! We have tried it a few times. They are super rich, but absolutely incredible. Thanks for sharing
Alan Bergo
Glad they worked for you Charlene.
Lola
Thank you so much for this recipe!
I just made it last night, and it was absolutely phenomenal. I’ve been wanting to make these for some time, and finally found enough Hericium to do so. The consistency and flavor were perfect, and astoundingly similar to crab while highlighting the mushroom in a lovely way.
Linda Morris
Paragraphs 2 and 3, are the same paragraph. Paragraphs 4 and 5, are almost the same.
Alan Bergo
Thanks for catching that Linda, looks like a cache malfunction or some other kind of connection hiccup there. I fixed it.
Caitlin
Is there a reason the ingredient list shows up, but not the recipe itself/steps? Thanks!
Alan Bergo
Thank you so much for pointing this out. I have been having problems with text being dropped from recipes after I switched over from having text to using a widget. It's fixed. Thank you!! A
Sandrine
Hi Alan,
I’ve been following all your suggestions since I discovered foraging for mushrooms this amazing summer. From drying boletes, making your duxelles to preserve a large collection of honeys (mixed with ever more maitake from the 100 pounds I have eaten, given away, made into broth and dried for future broth. Your techniques for cooking chanterelles and black trumpets and methods to preserve (and not to) for the various kinds of fungi have been an endless resource.
I wanted to thank you today as I look at my next recipe after finding a beautiful large hericium americanus. I can’t wait to try it. Everything else has been great.
Alan Bergo
Hey thanks! Glad things have been working out for you. Did you like the crabcakes? I’ve had some people say they think they’re a bit mild, but they’re supposed to be. The recipes are just a framework for starting.
Jill
Just made these. They were exceptional!!! Thank you
Alan Bergo
Thanks Jill.
Robert Johns / The Growing Company
Hi Chef! Wow, that was a really great description of the eggs, scallions, and tasting process.... Good thing I'm a mycologist and researcher of mushrooms and not a culinary master as yourself!!!
It was very frustrating trying to get the recipe right, as a complete amateur "cook", but now that I've done it once, and with your further instructions, I think we'll have better success next time. It took us almost 3 hours to finish the recipe on the first attempt, but I think it will take less than half of that time the next time.
As for how the guests sampled the Snow Crab Mushroom Crab Cakes: The plates were served with one crab cake per person. One pound of the H. erinaceous (we've trademarked it commercially as the Snow Crab Mushroom). As hinted at in the earlier post, The Growing Company has also trademarked the Hericium's cousin, H. abietis, which grows with a pink pigmentation, as the Pink Lobster Mushroom, as it is pink, forms more dense, but smaller compact growths and resemble lobster tails, and of course, they have a true marisco (seafood) flavor, which imparts the flavor of lobster when cooked in butter and onions.
So, here's what I think we'll do next time we make your recipe: 1. Chop or tear (probably tear the fresh mushroom) into much smaller chunks., 2. Use slightly more scallions, 3. Cut back on all of the egg mixture (we used two beaten Jumbo eggs "whole" and added the recommended yolk to that beaten mixture, and then beat it again). So, we will use a little less egg mixture.
Flavor wise... we need something to make a slightly more pronounced "pop". Maybe a bit more lemon zest or a few drops of lime or lemon? Not sure yet. All in all, we'd like to make this a massively commercial product, so we will have to make a unique product that stands up to the most discerning taste buds.
Sure hope that you can help. Contact me privately if you wish and we can discuss future plans for release of future value added product line.
Thanks again Chef Alan,
Robert Johns
President/Owner
The Growing Company
Robert Johns / The Growing Company
Hi Alan,
12/02/2017
I found a 2.8 pound specimen of Hericium erinaceous (Snow Crab Mushroom) growing about 30 feet off of the ground from an oak tree that appeared to be hit by lightning.
My fiance climbed an extension ladder to extract it from the tree and gently tossed it down to me with an open blanket.
Once removing the base debris, which wasn't much, and cutting the specimen by about 1/3 more to give to share with a visiting doctor who is working with our Exotic Mushroom Company to produce a variety of nutraceutical tempehs, I was left with 0.9 pounds of the specimen. I added a Pink Lobster mushroom (Hericium abietis) with the H. erinaceous to make up the one pound amount required to attempt your recipe.
I had no idea what sweating a mushroom entailed so I read your recipe about 10 times and then called a few acclaimed chefs (clients/friends) in Atlanta to get their input on sweating the mushrooms. Basically, I decided from your suggestions and theirs to cut the nearly impeccable mushroom and the choice small amount of the H. abietis into chunks and put them in 2 saute pans. I couldn't really get all of the pound in my largest pan.
Not much liquid ever formed, even with the condensate from the lids that I decided to use. The mushrooms very slowly, but eventually wilted and became soft throughout, Teeth first, cuticle (core) last. I used a cheese cloth and nitrile gloves to squeeze the juice out of the mushrooms and found the juice and the mushrooms to be delightful with the small amount of butter and pinch of salt that you recommended.
We pre-measured all of the ingredients that your recipe outlined and mixed them together as per recipe.
The forming of the Snow Crab/Pink Lobster Mushroom Cakes we found the mix a bit sticky, but it did hold together. We used jumbo eggs, so that might have had some affect on the mix.
Finally we put the formed cakes into the 2 Tbl buttered saute pan, and we got (4) four-inch cakes and one a bit smaller.
Result:
Four people tasted the recipe and we were all satisfied, but we all came away with the recipe needing something. Perhaps more lemon? Perhaps more onion? Maybe the mushroom should be torn and not chopped? Something.
We'll try it again after tomorrow's harvest of the H. abietis (Pink Lobster Mushroom) growing in one of the test growing houses, and continue to experiment.
Thank you very much for this foundation recipe. We only wish that you were here to prepare it for us so we would have had a professional's touch added to our first taste.
Let me know if you have any ideas to help us improve this recipe. We have been in commercial production for 40 years and yet we experiment growing over 40 varieties of mushrooms. We are eagerly seeking ideas to expand our value-added mushroom food product line, so this is important to us.
Thank you very much,
Robert Johns
President/Owner
The Growing Company
Alan Bergo
Hi Robert, you made the crab cakes!
Thanks so much for sending me your thoughts, I really appreciate it.
It can be hard to convey certain things through recipes. Even with a recipe measurements written by weight using a scale with simple directions, there can be culinary vagaries that can be confusing. For example, I should have probably specified the exact size of the eggs I used in the recipe, which are usually smaller than commercial eggs. Smaller eggs may not seem like a big deal, but egg white in particular can be a very volatile variable. Egg whites not only possess, and therefore add excess water to things, but that water can then dilute flavors. Egg whites also have a much more rubbery coagulative property than fatty egg yolks. Maybe this year I should try developing a version with all yolks like I do with pasta.
Other things can muddy the waters too, the size of locally harvested scallions is often much larger than commercially available scallions, which are generally very small and thin and have much less of the assertive white bottom portion of the plant. That being said, It's also very important to me to make things on here to be as accessible as possible, so insisting people only use organic scallions harvested at the peak of season, purchased at a farmers market would make things start to sound a little overbearing to me.
The other thing I always impress upon people I'm cooking with is to taste their food, repeatedly, something that is very important for consistency in restaurant work. In the vast majority of the recipes I have here on this website, near the end of the method it says something to the tune of "taste for seasoning and adjust as needed". Before something is sent out to a friend, family member, or most importantly, a paying guest, tasting the dish one last time and making any necessary adjustments is the last safeguard to ensure properly seasoned food.
Lastly, did your guests that ate the cakes eat them as part of a larger dish, or were they by themselves? I try to focus on the purity of ingredients here, but eating a plate of anything alone can get monotonous. I really liked these with a dollop of aioli, and a lemony green salad, nothing too fancy, just some simple partners on the plate to round it out.
If you try it again let me know how it goes! Thanks again.
Liddy
This looks great . Cheasapeak bay born an raised
Carla Beaudet
Purchased a beautiful Hericium at the Staunton, VA farmers market on Saturday, and used your recipe as a guide. One question: Is there some reason you sweat these as opposed to steaming them for the first step of cooking? I mean, it seems like the object is to get them to give up their liquid without browning them, and steaming would get you to the point where any liquid could be wrung out and saved without a chance of browning.
Alan Bergo
Sweating can be done in a pan. Steaming would involve a little more complicated process. You can do whatever you want though, more than one way to make a mushroom crabcake.
Nina
Why would you separate the mushrooms and their liquid only to put them back together in the very next step?
Alan Bergo
The reason the mushrooms get separated from their liquid is because they need to be chopped, it wouldn't be a lot of fun to chop very wet mushrooms, and you would lose some of their juice that has a lot of flavor in it.
S Mois
Just made this recipe and like with all your recipes it came out delicious. I did serve it with lobster mushroom risoto. Delish....
Alan Bergo
Glad it worked for you.
Joey rohl
First recipe with lions mane and wow. What a great mushroom! Not overpowering at all. Blends well with allowing the flavors to individually pop. Thank you for the recipe will definitely be trying your others!
Will K.
What a great idea! I've only found this mushroom once; H. erinaceus is much more common in my stomping grounds. I'll keep this recipe in mind for when I run across it again.
Pete Hautman
Thank you for the recipe. That was the first thing I thought of upon tasting my first Hericium—crab cakes! But I never seem to find enough at one time. Still searching...
Alan Bergo
You're very welcome Pete. It was pure luck stumbling upon the Hericium patch, and for a couple years I really could only find little bits here and there-rarely enough to make little cakes everyone mentions with these. I'm always keeping my eyes out for spots with dead, fallen wood. I've seen a bunch at Wild River.
Jean Sershen
I found these recently and they were dirty and difficult to clean, so I pickled them as you suggested in another post. I have two beautiful pints????Then yesterday I found some more so I thought I'd fry some up. I ate very little since it was my first time trying them (my husband tried them as well). I got a stomach ache a few hours later (he didn't but he had less than I). Do you think it's a reaction or did I not cook them long enough? Is this a common mushroom to react to with GI upset? I now hesitate to eat the pickled ones. What's your hunch? Not that it matters but I am allergic to shellfish. thoughts?
Thanks! Jean
David Wilson
Alan - I'm looking for someone to spend a few hours out on my land to teach me to forage mushroom - we've got lots of them but even with the guide books I'm not sure which ones to eat except the puff balls. Is there anyone around the Twin Cities area I could hire to hike with me and teach me about edible mushrooms?
Can't wait to go back to Lucia's with you at the helm!
Alan Bergo
Thanks David, and sorry for the radio silence over here. The Lucia's undertaking is eating me a live a bit, slowly but surely I'm getting happier with the place though, but it is slow going.
Dan F
My mouth waters!! OMG those look good. I haven't found a hericium in several years, and never did find a reliable tree or area. Well, the one log that was looking like it might produce until it rotted to nothing was removed for a disc golf park. Grrrr!!
Anyway... next time I do stumble onto one... crab cakes, it is!