• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Forager Chef

Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

  • Home
  • About
  • Mushrooms
    • Mushroom Archive
    • Posts by Species
      • Other Mushrooms
        • Lobster Mushrooms
        • Shrimp of the Woods
        • Truffles
        • Morels
        • Shaggy Mane
        • Hericium
        • Puffball
      • Polypores
        • Hen of the Woods
        • Dryad Saddle
        • Chicken of The Woods
        • Cauliflowers
        • Ischnoderma
        • Beefsteak
      • Chanterelles
        • Black Trumpet
        • Hedgehogs
        • Yellowfeet
      • Gilled
        • Matsutake
        • Honey Mushrooms
        • Russula / Lactarius
          • Candy Caps
          • Saffron Milkcap
          • Indigo Milkcap
      • Boletes
        • Porcini
        • Leccinum
        • Slippery Jacks
    • Recipes
      • Fresh
      • Dried
      • Preserves
    • The Basics
  • Plants
    • Plant Archive
    • Leafy Green Recipes
      • Leafy Green Plant Varieties
    • Ramps
    • Wild Herbs and Spices
      • Spruce and Conifers
      • Pollen
      • Prickly Ash
      • Bergamot / Wild Oregano
      • Golpar / Cow Parsnip
    • Wild Fruit
      • Wild Plums
      • Highbush Cranberry
      • Wild Grapes
      • Rowanberries
      • Wild Cherries
      • Aronia
      • Nannyberry
      • Wild Blueberries
    • From The Garden
    • Nuts, Roots, Tubers and Grains
    • Stalks and Shoots
  • Meat
    • Four-Legged Animals
      • Venison
      • Small Game
    • Poultry
    • Fish/Seafood
    • Offal
    • Charcuterie
  • Recipes
    • Pickles, Preserves, Etc
    • Fermentation
    • Condiments
    • Appetizers
    • Soup
    • Salad
    • Side Dishes
    • Entrees
    • Baking
    • Sweets
  • Video
    • Foraging Videos
    • Lamb and Goat Series
    • YouTube Tutorials
  • Press
    • Podcasts
  • Work
    • Public Speaking
    • Charity and Private Dinners
    • Forays / Classes / Demos

Scaber Stalk / Leccinum Mushrooms

scaber stalk mushroom leccinum

A Leccinum mushroom growing with aspen and birch. This guy is a little mature, look out for bugs.

There’s a lot of boletes out there to hunt, and they can be mystifying to try and identify if you’re trying to make a meal out of them. Scaber Stalks, also known as Leccinums, Aspen or Birch Boletes, are one of the more easy boletes to identify. Well, hold on, saying that they’re easy to identify though is a little misleading, but, basically, It’s easy to tell if a mushroom is a Leccinum, but it can be difficult to tell exactly which species of Leccinum it is.

For the most part, with the exception of one species I’ll go over, Leccinums tell you immediately what they are by the markings on their stems, also known as “scabers”.

Scabers

The picture below is a great example of typical-looking Leccinum. Notice the scabers, or black markings on the stem, which are a dead giveaway.

Leccinum mushroom from Nakemin, in the Boundary Waters.
Leccinum mushroom from Nakemin, in the Boundary Waters.

Exceptions to the scaber rule 

Of course, mushrooms don’t know that they’re supposed to play by rules, so, of course there is an exception to the scaber ID trick. Luckily, so far these are the only one I know of, and once you’ve picked them a couple times, they’re easy. They’re name is Hemileccinum subglabripes, or what I call the yellow Leccinum, and they are the only mushroom I konw of with the word Leccinum in their name that doesn’t have the black markings on the stem. Everything else is similar though: they’re heavy, weighy mushrooms, and they enjoy the same habitat as other Leccinums. They’re also good eaters, and have a great resistance to bugs. See more pictures of these here.

Hemileccinum subglabripes
A nice flush of Hemileccinum subglabripes. The only exception to the scaber rule I know of.
Hemileccinum subglabripes
Hemileccinum subglabripes. A northwoods lover from near the Boundary Waters.

Habitat

These will start to fruit in the summer where I’m from in Minnesota, just as the chanterelles start to fruit in early July. As their name implies, more often than not when I see them, they’re growing with aspen or birch, although I’ve seen species with the dark red cap growing in stands of pure Norway pine as well in Northern Minnesota. The species below I usually see in areas that include both aspen and oak.

leccinum mushrooms birch bolete edible minnesota

One Leccinum species Minnesota has to offer, growing with aspen. The largest in this picture was over a foot tall!

Orange-Capped Leccinums: edible, poisonous? Or Both?

Boletes in the Leccinum family have been used as a food for a long time, and they’re especially popular in Eastern Europe, and with Immigrants in the United States from those countries. But, current field guides do not recommend orange cap-leccinum mushrooms for the table, citing a number of different poisoning cases over the years. However, just because a few people were poisoned, in my mind, doesn’t necessitate that we toss out a group of mushrooms that are delicious to eat. Modern, alarmist claims that certain food plants and mushrooms that have been known to be eaten for a long time by different groups of humans, need to be taken into consideration, and balanced, with ethnobotanical evidence and accounts of consumption. Modern science is extremely valuable, but so are the human food traditions that often predate it by thousands of years.

“It wasn’t the mushrooms fault that I didn’t cook it long enough” 

I should know, as Leccinum is the only species of wild mushroom I’ve poisoned myself with. The thing was, I had been eating Leccinums cooked fresh, and I didn’t cook them long enough. After a night full of horrible vomiting and cramps, I learned my lesson. It wasn’t the mushrooms fault that I didn’t cook it long enough. I dry ever Leccinum I harvest now, since, besides improving their flavor, it negates gastro-intestinal worries. Dehydrating, in my opinion has been, and always will be a first line of defense against the most common, mild toxins found in edible mushrooms. It might sound wierd, but orange-capped Leccinum are what I would call technically poisonous, and edible at the same time, just like Morchella and Gyromitra mushrooms. It’s my opinion that orange capped Leccinums, after dehydrating, are just as safe (not to mention rich and delicious) as any most other wild mushrooms you’d like to eat. To be clear: I dehydrate every Leccinum I harvest.

Cooking

There are definitely a couple tricks to know here. The first thing I’ll mention is that I don’t typically eat them fresh unless they’re very small buttons. I prefer to dry them, since I think it concentrates their flavor, and also bypasses any danger of under-cooking. When eaten fresh these are good, but a bit mild.

Separating the caps from the stem

One thing you’ll notice straight away, is that these can be heavy, dense mushrooms, well, the stem that is. As the mushrooms age, the stems stay very firm (and often bug-free), but, the caps can become flimsy, and often full of intruders. This means that the cap and stem will cook at different rates, so you’ll need to add the stalk to the pan first, before adding the cap, if you want to do something like saute them, which I generally don’t do any way.

leccinum mushrooms edible minnesota birch bolete

From my experience, these varieties are the ones that can cause gastric upset under-cooked. They’ll dry just fine though.

Recipes

Here’s some favorite recipes I like specifically for Leccinums, or boletes in general

  • Wild Mushroom Conserve
  • Wild Mushroom Duxelles
  • Dried Wild Mushroom Duxelles
  • Fresh Bolete Butter
  • Fresh Boletes With Radish Snaps and Peas
  • Fresh Bolete Julienne
  • Baby Chicken With Bolete-Wine Sauce
  • Mixed Wild Mushrooms With Persillade
  • Cream of Bolete Soup With Black Walnut Pesto
  • Shrimp With Bolete Infused Soy-Brandy Cream
  • Dried Bolete Infused Soy Sauce
  • Porcini-Pike Bolognese
  • Dried Bolete Crusted Pheasant
  • Shortribs With Dried Boletes and Root Vegetables
  • Beef Commercial With Dried Boletes
  • Dried Bolete-Cheese Fritters
  • Homemade Ricotta Cheese With Dried Boletes
  • Dried Bolete Gnudi Dumplings
  • Fresh Boletes Cooked In Sour Cream

More Mushroom Recipes

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Print
  • Email
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • Reddit

Related

Previous Post: « Chicken Fat Bolete Mushroom or Suillus Americanus
Next Post: Fiddlehead Ferns »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. James

    July 20, 2014 at 11:09 pm

    I have recently spied these in an aspen grove I take care of. I have been researching these aspen boletes to identify them as edible. I have been cautiously eating a small part at a time. I have had them fried and dried. So far I have consumed two 1/4 ” slices of the whole mushroom. No ill effects. They smell and taste so good.
    I live in the middle part of Saskatchewan. Your report was encouraging.

    Reply
    • Kd

      September 13, 2019 at 7:56 pm

      I have the birch bolete growing on my property and it is delicious. I have also eaten the bicolor bolete and it too is delicious. I love the bolete mushrooms. They are very choice. And to think, the Italians call them porcini and some consider them to be pig food. Maybe I should ask them if they will let me have their boletes.

      Reply
      • Chris

        October 24, 2019 at 3:16 pm

        Porcini means little piggy and refers to the king bolete. These patches are highly coveted. Suillus mushrooms are fed to the pigs.

        Reply
      • Srbodlak

        August 2, 2020 at 8:39 am

        Porcini means piglets, and Italians love them as theu love the real piglets.

        Reply

Trackbacks

  1. It's Still Summer, But Fall Is In A Hurry To Get Here This Year. - Keep Your Eyes Peeled says:
    September 10, 2017 at 7:40 am

    […] I  walked in the mixed pine, birch and aspen woods in search of aspen scaber bloete or red tops, as my dad called them, I noticed a lot of the leaves are now beginning to show some […]

    Reply
  2. Only One "Red Top" Mushroom, But Still A Nice Hike On The Last Sunday Of Summer. - Keep Your Eyes Peeled says:
    September 20, 2018 at 6:22 pm

    […] of the late Summer sunshine and visited the birch, aspen and pine woods were my families favorite “red top” or aspen scaber stalk mushrooms grow. I was hoping the recent rains would provide me with plenty of these mushrooms which […]

    Reply
  3. Only One "Red Top" Mushroom, But Still A Nice Hike On The Last Sunday Of Summer. – Keep Your Eyes Peeled says:
    April 11, 2019 at 5:00 am

    […] of the late Summer sunshine and visited the birch, aspen and pine woods were my families favorite “red top” or aspen scaber stalk mushrooms grow. I was hoping the recent rains would provide me with plenty of these mushrooms which […]

    Reply
  4. Insects, Flowers And Even Some Birds With My Macro Lens. - Keep Your Eyes Peeled says:
    September 2, 2019 at 6:47 am

    […] a couple of nice ‘red top” mushrooms at the start of my hike.  The aspen scaber bolete and birch scaber bolete  are the mushrooms my dad thought us to pick. I need to find these mushrooms for soup […]

    Reply
  5. Wild Mushroom Caps Cooked in Embers says:
    December 9, 2019 at 9:30 am

    […] need long cooking or dehydrating, and wouldn’t make good candidates for quick cooking, like Leccinum […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recipe Rating




Primary Sidebar

Pre-Order MY BOOK

Categories

Forager Chef

Forager Chef

Instagram

foragerchef

🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Footer

Privacy

  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2021 · Foodie Pro & The Genesis Framework

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.