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Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Lactarius thyinos

Lactarius thyinos, an edible member of the saffrom milkcap mushroo family One of the best parts of modern mushroom hunting is the amount of information that gets shared on a daily basis. Tons of information and observations are shared daily, and depending on how many groups and regions you pay attention to, there’s a lot you can glean without having to leave your home. A great example for me in 2018 was when my friend Pete posted to one of our local forums about a Lactarius he’d picked earlier this year using a name I hadn’t heard before: thyinos.

I like Saffron milkcaps, but the patches I pick near the Twin Cities proper with red and eastern white pine are picky about when they’d like to fruit, and when they do come up, it can be invisible: the mushrooms can be buried completley under inches of needle duff, with mushrumps (bumps in the forest floor indicating mushrooms) so imperceptable they may as not even exist. As big a fan in excercises in futility that I am, I prefer my mushrooms visible, clean, and not buried under needles.

Lactarius thyinos, an edible member of the saffrom milkcap mushroo family

Note the pronounced orange latex at the cuts.

Habitat

I kept striking out at my pine patches around St. Paul, but, traveling up north I found an easier way to grab bags full of the deliciousus group: change terrain. Instead of hitting patches of pine woods inside of larger decisduous forest, I just drove a couple hours north into the taiga, where conifers rule and oaks are the rarity.

norway spruce branch mn

Norway spruce seemed to be the symbiotic partner of my Lactarius.

(Michael Kuo says they’re well known in cedar bogs) A number of places with aspen, birch and cedar where I hunt Leccinum and chanterelles were bursting with bright orange mushrooms, and I was thrilled when I picked a few up and noticed that they didn’t stain green when bruised or touched, at all.

Lactarius thyinos, an edible member of the saffrom milkcap mushroo family

Look Ma, no stains!

Typical Saffron milkcaps, Lactarius deliciousus are ok to eat. They’re not going to exactly blow your mind, but they make up for it with the shock of seeing brilliant orange mushooms popping up through the pine needles. Id I see deliciousus, I’m probably going to pick them. The biggest draw back with L. deliciousus is visual: (along with the typical bug damage you might see with Lactarius in the Midwest) the mushrooms stain a dingy green when bruised, and although it doesn’t affect the flavor, it’s definitely unnapealing. After tromping around in the woods in your bag or backpack, that haul of brilliant orange mushrooms can arrive in your kitchen a bruised green mess, depending on how much they were jostled in transportation. Sometimes to preserve colors of mushrooms that bruise, I’ll carry paper towels or wax paper with to wrap delicate mushrooms individually.

Lactarius thyinos, an edible member of the saffrom milkcap mushroo family

Cooking 

Before I even cooked them, the absence of green bruising alone shot these to the top of the Deliciousus group for me. After I ate a few I was even more impressed, they cooked up like a dream, and the flavor was great. Typical saffron milkcaps get a bad rap for being crumbly or grainy tasting, the thyinos were better on all counts for me. The structure of the mushrooms is noticeably lighter, more delicate than other saffron milkcaps. The lighter structure and overall delicate-ness seemed to translated to a better eating experience, but that might just be the mangalitsa lard talking.

Either way, these are super easy to mushrooms from the delciousus group, and good eaters. Keep your eyes open for them.

Recipes

You can obviously sub these for saffron milkcaps in any recipe. As I’ve mentioned before, Spain’s love for milkcaps in this family is unaparallelled, so they have a number of preparations that call for them specifically, the favorites I’ve found being fricando (dish of braised veal) and Catalan saffron milkcaps (cooked with sausage).

Fricando of veal with saffron milkcaps
Catalan saffron milkcaps 
Saffron milkcaps with chickpeas and Gran Queso
Saffron milkcap paella
Fried saffron milkcaps with yogurt
Conserve (I like to blanch saffron milkcaps should before preserving to remove mucilage) 

Previous Post: « Water Pepper / Persicaria hydropiper
Next Post: Milwaukee Rice Bowl with Coral Mushrooms and Lotus Root »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. pete hautman

    October 5, 2018 at 7:07 pm

    One of my favorites. They are abundant in the arrowhead region, where I vacation in August, most years. They seem to show up even in dry conditions, and are rarely buggy.

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      October 5, 2018 at 8:06 pm

      I have you to thank for sharing priming me to be on the lookout for them. Thanks.

      Reply
  2. Viola

    October 26, 2019 at 7:11 pm

    I’ve been passing this one by for years because I knew it was a milkcap, but not the orange with green deliciousus. So I just didn’t know. Now I know. And this is a truly lovely tasty mushroom. And a beaut on the plate.

    I always find this one when lobster mushroom hunting, so I’ll be doubling up on the orange mushrooms from now on.

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      October 27, 2019 at 9:05 am

      You’ll lovem. My favorite of the deliciosus group.

      Reply
  3. Viola

    January 11, 2020 at 5:33 pm

    Thanks for your website! It’s invaluable to me in what is possible for me to find even farther north here in Northwestern Ontario Canada. And LOVE your recipes!

    Reply

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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
100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw v 100% wild candy bars. I don’t usually make raw vegan snacks, but when I read about Euell Gibbon’s wild hackberry candy bars I had to try them. The  originals were just crushed hackberries and hickory nuts, but, I’ve read that Euell grew to dislike the crunch of hackberry seeds later in life. 

Here’s the thing though, if you sift the hackberry flour, you get a fun texture, with no worries about cracking a tooth. 

These are equal parts ground hackberries, dried wild blueberries, and hickory nuts, with a splash of maple syrup to bind.

The end product is a shelf stable, nutrient-packed bite filled with protein, carbohydrates, fats and natural sugars infinitely adaptable to your local landscape.

The texture is chewy and nougat-like, and now I’m curious to see how they’d perform baked in recipes that use frangipane or almond paste. 

#euellgibbons #energybars #hackberry #crushin #paleobreakfast #tradionalfood #wildfoodlove #rawfoods
Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and c Hackberry milk spoonbread with black walnuts and chokecherry gastrique is one of the dishes @credononfiction and I filmed for @headspace. 

I cook hackberry milk with cornmeal and maple syrup, whip some egg whites and fold them in, then bake. Eats a bit like crust-less pumpkin pie, if pumpkin pie came from a tree. 

#hackberry #souffle #wildfoodlove #chokecherry #blackwalnuts #brunching
Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made f Hackberry milk is a sort of rustic nut milk made from ground hackberries and water. I grind the berries to a meal, then simmer with 3x their volume of water, strain through a chinois (without pressing) season with maple and a pinch of cinnamon. Tastes like pumpkin pie in a glass, also a decent cooking medium. 

#hackberries #nutmilk #foraging #wildfoodlove #celtisoccidentalis
Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of b Are hackberries a fruit? A nut? They're a bit of both. They also contain protein, fat, and carbs, and the oldest evidence of humans enjoying them goes back 500,000 years. Right now is the best time to harvest them in the Midwest as the leaves have fallen. The full break down and introduction to them is in my bio. 
#hackberry #celtisoccidentalis #winterforaging #wildfoodlove #traditionalfoods #manbird
If you’re in the Twin Cities the nocino I collab If you’re in the Twin Cities the nocino I collaborated on with @ida_graves_distillery for 2020 is on the shelves @surdyksliquor along with our spruce tip liquor. I’d give it a couple weeks before they sell out. 

Brock did a good job on this one: mellow flavor that almost reminds me of a tootsie roll, with spices and mellow tannins. 

#nocino #liquor #distillery #craftspirits #blackwalnuts #mnwinter
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