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Foraging and Cooking Mushrooms, Wild and Obscure Food

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Morel Mushrooms

gray morels

Young grey morels-my favorite.

In the Midwest especially, if you say “wild mushroom”, many people know of only one: the morel.

It’s thought of as one of the greatest mushrooms in the world, and I definitely agree. Minnesota even has it listed as it’s official “state mushroom”.

I can still remember the first time I found one. It was only one, a single lone mushroom. I got very excited though. Over the next few weeks my friend and I ended up running into our biggest patch, the one we still return to every year in the Spring.

For me, morel hunting is more than just getting out and looking for food, it’s a right of spring, and the first chapter in the mushroom growth as a whole for the coming season. After enduring another Minnesota Winter each year, hunting morels is a great way to celebrate the growing season, and the onset of warmer weather.

Morel hunts have also become a tradition with my friend that was with me when we found our first patch. We get up early to avoid prying eyes, then spend a few hours looking together. After our hunts I usually cook them up his favorite way-breaded and fried.

morels from minnesota

A “deep woods morel”. Watch where you step.

As far as hunting these go, you have a couple options. The old advice of looking around for dead elms is spot on, but there are other ways to find them too. And, since the peak of Dutch-elm death has passed, it’s useful to know different types of terrain where you can hunt so that you’re not limiting yourself by only looking for dead elms.

In Minnesota, I find Morels growing around dead and dying elms, cottonwoods, and old apple orchards in the southern deciduous portion of the state. In the northern conifer forests, I find black, grey and blonde morels in aspen groves. They also like disturbed areas, like aspen groves and other forests that have been burned or flooded. Confusingly, the seem to grow in the presence of dead and dying matter, but also mycorhizally-a natural symbiosis with their surroundings.

Different species of morels

We know a lot more about morels than in the past. Plenty of hunters might say they pick “blondes and greys”. There are many more individual species though. I’m not even going to attempt to directly identify the individual species, but I’ll list a few of the different ones that I notice, since I do think some of them cook up a bit better than others, although the differences are slight. To keep things easy, for my purposes here I’m going to say you can think of morels as 4 different types: blondes, greys, deep woods morels, and black morels.

Grey Morels

Typically these are the first morels that I see growing in the spring. They’re smaller than blonde morels, but make up for it with a structure that is more dense. Many experienced morel hunters I’ve spoken to prefer these over their blonde/yellow cousins.

grey morels

A small grey morel

Blonde, Gold, or Yellow Morels

From my experience, these grow to be larger than grey or dark morels. Their larger size doesn’t necessarily mean more is better though. As these grow in size, they tend to get crumbly. The “walls” of yellow morels are also thinner than grey or darker colored morels. As far as morels go, these are probably the most widely available, but If pressed, I would choose grey or darker colored morels over them. These are minute details though, at the end of the day they’re still morels, and they’re great eaters.

morels from minnesota

A large blonde morel. See the sprout?

“Deep Woods” Morels

Deep woods morels are a name I’ve given to these, since I tend to only see them in the deep woods, as opposed to out in more open spaces. When I’m hunting in large expanses of woods, typically around dead elms and cottonwoods, I see these, they’re much darker than the typical morels I see commercial hunters bring in, and I think they’re a close tie texture wise to the grey morel, if not equal.

morels from minnesota

Dark colored “deep woods morels”.

Black Morels

black morels

Black morels, the young ones can be a cream color before they develop their black ridges.

These are good eaters too, but I’ve separated them into a different post. Their habitat can differ slightly that others where I live in Minnesota. See my post on Black Morels.

Cooking

Now the most fun part, morels are some of the best eating mushrooms around, but you do need to know a couple things about them:

  • Never eat morels raw, they could make you sick
  • Browning them will deepen and improve their flavor
  • If you find perfect morels, they can be cooked whole, just make sure to inspect inside for dirt or insects
  • Some people have allergies, even if they’re cooked through, especially with black morels
  • Simple preparations are the best, the more ingredients, the less you will taste the morels themselves

Preservation wise, these are one of the best mushrooms you can find to drying and save for future dishes. Since they’re hollow, they dry quickly. You can easily dehydrate morels in front of a fan or even easier, a dehydrator without heat-my first choice.

I know one guy that sets them up halved on screens in his garage. Just make sure not to use too much heat when drying them, since it can cause them to rot while they dry and turn black, which means they won’t taste as good.

After morels are dried, they can be easily reconstituted by covering with cold water, stock or alcohol. Afterword they’re rehydrated and plumped up, they need to be swished around in their liquid to remove any dirt that hung on to them.

After dirt is removed, just strain the liquid and recombine it with the morels, then add them to whatever you like. Remember too, even after they’re dried and reconstituted, browning them a bit in butter or oil lightly will improve their flavor.

dried morels

Winter is coming, so dry those morels.

Look-a-Likes: Gyromitra, Half-Frees, and Verpas–all edible. But.

There are a few different species that can be confused with true morels, but mostly when you hear the words “false morel” it’s going to refer to some type of Gyromitra, which fruit at roughly the same time. Some people actually eat Gyromitra, from my experience especially in the Upper peninsula of Michigan. In Europe, they’re still sold dried at markets in Europe, I know Finland for sure. The supposed problem with them is that their supposed to concentrate a toxin in your body that builds over time which can cause some harm, or death, eventually. Now, in our current age, demonizing all Gyromitra has been shown to be false, and many of them are perfectly fine to eat, although I still par boil them personally.

The Big Takeaway

Gyromitra, regular morels, half-free morels, or verpas are all edible, but none of them should ever be eaten raw or undercooked, and some need to be par boiled or otherwise denatured by drying, etc. 

Gyromitra mushrooms or false morels

A species of Gyromitra, a false morel. Notice they are wrinkled instead of having pits. These are typically much larger than morels too.

Should I soak morels in salt water to remove bugs?

Absolutely, positively, never. Soaking morels in salt water will ruin them, but there’s all sorts of folk advice that recommends it. Technically salt water is a brine. Bugs and debris float to the top of the salt water not because of a magical effect cleaning effect, but because water, and especially water with salt in it causes things to float in it, like the Dead Sea.

What happens if you soak morels in salt water is that the salt will draw out the natural water from inside the morel which “cooks” it in a way. When you remove them, they’ll be flaccid and limp. After frying in a bunch of butter they might taste ok, but if a cook did that to my morels in the kitchen we would be having a serious talk about their continued employment.

Resources

How to Cook a Gyromitra

Half-Free Morels

Recipes

Here’s some of my favorite recipes I’ve created especially for morels.

  • Ricotta-Ramp Tart With Morel Jus
  • Fresh Pasta With Grass Fed Beef and Dried Morel Mushrooms
  • Morels And Brick Cheese On Rye, With Ramp Leaf Aioli
  • Shad Roe With Pickled Morels And Bacon
  • Steak and Morels en Crepinette, with Nettles and Grains
  • Roger Verge’s Morel Quiche
  • Grecian Black Morels
  • Pickled Morel Mushrooms
  • Croissant Stuffed With Morels Ramps And Nettles
  • Morels A la Normande; With Black Spring Truffle
  • Simple Fried/Breaded Morels
  • Wild Mushroom Conserve

More Morels

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Maybeth

    April 29, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    So if not soak morels, how do i clean them?

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      October 7, 2019 at 9:57 am

      Swish in cold water, then dry on towels. I have a video on you tube.

      Reply
      • Barbara

        March 8, 2021 at 3:54 pm

        5 stars
        Do you use this method for farm and wild morels?

        Reply
        • Alan Bergo

          March 8, 2021 at 5:45 pm

          I only harvest wild morels.

          Reply
  2. Peggy Drury

    May 5, 2019 at 3:23 pm

    What if wild morels are turning brown at the stem when u puck the are they still good

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      May 6, 2019 at 9:15 pm

      They can be, make sure they’re not soft and gooey at all. If they’re fresh and firm, they’re good. You can trim brown parts off too.

      Reply
  3. Joe Bower

    May 4, 2020 at 6:31 pm

    I dried mine and they turned nearly black. This was before I read not to soak them in salt water. I have been misinformed my whole life apparently. Are they still ok and do you feel this was from soaking too long and or using salt water. They were hung dry on mesh.

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      May 5, 2020 at 12:09 pm

      They’ll be fine, not great, but fine. Boil them or cook in broth to sterilize.

      Reply
  4. Shawn W

    May 5, 2020 at 2:38 pm

    Informative post, thank you!
    One question though: To make a compound butter using fresh black morels, do I need to steep them in hot/boiling water first, so as to not get sick from consuming the mushrooms raw once they’ve been pulverized into the compound butter?

    Cheers!

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      May 5, 2020 at 6:55 pm

      You would always cook mushrooms to make a compound butter, so raw mushroom consumption is a non-issue here. For a template for making fresh mushroom butter, see my recipe here: https://foragerchef.com/fresh-porcini-butter/
      Personally I prefer dried morels for butter since you get to use their liquid, see that recipe here: https://foragerchef.com/dried-morel-butter/

      A

      Reply

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🌱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
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