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

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My Favorite Marinated Honey Mushrooms

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Marinated Honey Mushrooms recipe

Honey mushrooms marinated with garlic, shallot, lemon, dill and hot chili. Feel free to switch up the dance partners.

I like to cook honey mushrooms in all kinds of wild mushroom recipes, but these marinated honeys are the first thing you should make if you’re new to them, or if you’re a honey-harvesting veteran who’s looking for something new tricks. They’re delicious, addicting, and a fun compliment to a charcuterie platter.

Most of us are probably familiar with little jars of “marinated mushrooms” which taste more like pickled mushrooms by necessity as the low amount of acid isn’t stable enough for long term preservation on a shelf.

Besides the heavy amount of acid, those little jars of marinated mushrooms are also made from boring white buttons. Honey mushrooms, especially the young buttons with their delicious, chewy texture, are a great stand-in for white buttons in a lot of different recipes, these being one of the best examples I’ve had to date. 

Boiling honey mushrooms

First the honey caps are boiled until wilted.

The recipe is really simple. First, you need honey buttons, not opened caps, buttons. Next you give them a good boil, about 5 minutes or so until they’re wilted, then rinse them, pat dry, and mix with a few herbs and seasonings, letting them sit for at least a few hours before you dig in. 

Boiled honey mushrooms for marinating

After boiling, you drain the mushrooms and pat dry.

Adjusting the flavor profile

This honey mushroom recipe is a nod to my friends in the Ukraine and Russia, where they love honeys. The flavors here reflect that, and I recommend it as a starting point. Once you make one batch, I’m sure you can tweak things to your liking. Here’s the big ingredients. 

  • Sunflower oil (only Smude’s oil will do here, other oils don’t have the same flavor) 
  • Flavorful herb (dill, oregano, mint, chives, tarragon, etc) 
  • Garlic 
  • Chili 
  • Lemon zest 

How to use them 

Marinated mushrooms are more than something to just eat cold out of a jar. Here’s a few ideas. 

  • Add a spoonful of caps to hot soup as a garnish, especially things like borcht and brothy soups. If you change the flavor profile up they’ll be excellent with Asian noodle soups too. 
  • Warm them up and spoon them on top of a protein: fish, steak, chicken, pork-anything 
  • Toss them with pasta to warm them up, especially minimalist pastas like very simple tomato sauce, garlic and oil, or pasta with pesto. 
  • Warm or room temp with your favorite charcuterie and cheeses. 

Marinated Honey Mushrooms recipe

Marinated Honey Mushrooms recipe
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Marinated Honey Mushrooms

Simple marinated honey mushrooms. Excellent served with antipasti, olives and sausage, warmed and served over fish, tossed into salads, and used as a soup garnish, or pretty much wherever you’d like. Serves 4 as an appetizer
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time5 mins
Marinating time8 hrs
Course: Appetizer, Condiment
Cuisine: American, Russian
Keyword: Honey Mushrooms, Marinated
Servings: 6

Ingredients

  • 10 oz fresh honey mushrooms preferably unopened buttons, stems trimmed down to 1 inch or less remaining
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt plus more to taste
  • 1 medium 5 g clove of garlic, grated on a mandoline
  • 1 small 15 g shallot, diced as small as possible or minced
  • 10 cracks of the peppermill
  • 1 small lemon
  • 2-3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice or your favorite vinegar or more to taste
  • ¼ cup Smude’s sunflower oil
  • Crushed red pepper or other hot chili to taste
  • Fresh chopped dill or your favorite soft herb like oregano, mint, etc basil, mint, etc, to taste, about 1-2 tablespoons

Instructions

  • Bring 3 quarts of water with 1 tablespoon kosher salt to a vigorous, rolling boil in a large stock pot that can accommodate the mushrooms and water without boiling over. Add the honey mushrooms, cover the pot, wait for the pot to come back to a boil, put the lid on, set a timer for ten minutes, keeping the pot at a rolling boil the whole time. Drain the mushrooms in a colander and allow to cool, then rinse.
  • Spread the mushrooms on paper towels or a cloth and press on them a bit to remove excess water.
  • Combine the mushrooms in a bowl with the remaining ingredients, zesting about half the lemon, and peeling 8-10 strips as thin as possible and cutting them into julienne (optional). Double check the seasoning for salt, acid and spiciness, adjust until it tastes good to you, then refrigerate.
  • The mushrooms will improve in flavor over time, and will last for a week or so.

More 

Honey Mushrooms

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Next Post: Why You Shouldn’t Dry-Age Venison Backstraps »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jacqui

    November 1, 2021 at 7:36 am

    The honeys have just started here and I brought home a bit over 2 kg, most of them perfect tiny buttons.
    So, a question: 5 minutes boiling feels like not enough for honeys we will then consume without further cooking.
    I am cautious with honeys and generally cook then for about 20 minutes when duxelling them for the freezer for later use in pierogi or burgers, or I use them in stews/goulash where they cook for a long time. I have pickled and canned them in the past but I cooked those ones pretty much to death too, and … nobody has ever gotten sick from honeys I have prepared, which I consider a triumph.
    So … you stand by the 5 minutes? I don’t want to break a winning streak…

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      November 3, 2021 at 11:14 am

      Jacqui, thanks for mentioning that. I re-wrote the method there a bit for clarity. I do stand by the 5 min if they follow the directions *explicitly*, but after doing the recipe testing for my book, I know that user error is definitely a thing, and since these are eaten without cooking after, I’m going to change it to 10 as some people can get lax on following guidelines. Thanks again for bringing it up 🙂

      Reply

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FORAGER | CHEF®
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Author: The Forager Chef’s Book of Flora
James Beard Award ‘22
Host: Field Forest Feast 👇
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Alan Bergo
Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water Long, fun day snatching crayfish out of the water by hand with Sam Thayer and @danielvitalis for @wild.fed 

Daniel and Sam were the apex predators, but I got a few. 

Without a net catching crayfish by hand is definitely a wax-on wax-off sort of skill. Clears your mind. 

They’re going into gumbo with porcini, sausage and milkweed pods today. 

#crayfish #ninjareflexes #waxonwaxoff #normalthings #onset🎥🎬
Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizo Working all day on preps for cattail lateral rhizomes and blueberries for this weeks shoot with @wildfed 

Been a few years since I worked with these. Thankfully Sam Thayer dropped a couple off for me to work with. They’re tender, crisp and delicious. 

Sam mentioned their mild flavor and texture could be because they don’t have to worry about predators eating them, since they grow in the muck of cattail marshes. 

I think they could use a pet name. Pond tusk? Swamp spears? Help me out here. 😂

Nature makes the coolest things. 

#itcamefromthepond #cattail #rhizomes #foraging #typhalatifolia
I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so I liked the staff meal I made for Mondays shoot so much we filmed it instead of the original dish I’d planned. 

Cooked natural wild rice (not the black shiny stuff) is great hot, cold, sweet or savory. It’s a perfect, filling lunch for a long day of berry picking. 

I make them with whatever I have on hand. Mushrooms will fade into the background a little here, so I use a bunch of them, along with lots of herbs and hickory nut oil + dill flowers. 

I’m eating the leftovers today back up in the barrens (hopefully) getting some more bluebs for another shoot this week w @wild.fed 

#wilwilwice #wildrice #chanterelles #campfood #castironcooking
Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine Baby’s first homegrown mushrooms! Backyard wine caps on hardwood sawdust from my lumberjack buddy.

Next up blewits. Spawn from @northsporemushrooms

#winecaps #strophariaaeruginosa #allthemushroomtags
It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from It’s wild cherry season. I’ll be picking from my favorite spot tomorrow a.m. and have room for a couple helpers. It’s at an event on a farm just south of St. Cloud. 

If you’re interested send me a message and I’ll raffle off the spots. Plenty of cherries to go around. I’ll be leading a short plant walk around the farm too. 

#chokecherries #foraging #prunusvirginiana #summervibes
Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking Special thanks to the beach in Ashland for hooking it up with on-site garnishes. Beach pea flowers taste strong and leguminous, similar to vetch, or like a rich tasting pea shoot. 

#lathyrusjaponicus #beachpeas #peaflower #foraging #northshore #bts
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