If you've ever wondered if you can eat the stems of honey mushrooms, which can be fibrous, you can and it can literally double the size of your harvest. The secret is peeling them to make them extra tender.
Honey mushrooms season is lightning fast. If you're a few days late; you can miss it altogether. I love these mushrooms, but not nearly as much as the families from Eastern Europe who stalk our Minnesota woods.
They're a great mushroom with a sweet note, and on good years it can seem like every oak tree in the forest is infected with them. If you get them at the right time, you can get pounds of perfect buttons. If you're really lucky, you can find large mushrooms with thick meaty stems too.
Honey mushrooms definitely have a sweet note that builds after you taste them. It is a rich, umami quality, much deeper than any shiitake (they are in the same family) could ever be.
Every person I have ever served them to has loved them. Eastern European mushroom hunters love them. I have a few different Russian and Ukranian cookbooks, they often call for an ingredient known as "Pidpenky": the honey mushroom. One of the traditional ways to cook them is mushrooms with sour cream.
Honey Mushroom Stems
Honey mushrooms can grow to have stems that are ridiculously long, and I've seen some over a foot in length.
Just like the greens of beets and turnips can be cooked alongside their underground counterpart, the long stem of the honey mushroom is part of the mushroom, and they're good to eat, if they're peeled.
If you find really nice specimens with no bug damage, you can really come away with a good haul of free, delicious food. All it takes is a couple minutes to peel them. They're tender and great to eat, and could be made into any number of things If you don't want to just throw them into the frying pan.
Step-By-Step
First, clean the mushrooms and remove any dirt. You can brush them or swish them briefly in water if needed. Next you'll trim the stems to a reasonable length, about 2-3 inches.
The stems can be peeled with a vegetable peeler, or peeled by hand.
Once the stems are peeled, cut them and the caps into roughly even-sized pieces. Heat the mushrooms in a non-stick pan on medium to medium-high heat. It's important to cook them for at least 15 minutes as undercooked honey mushrooms can make some people sick.
When the mushrooms are golden brown and caramelized, season them with a pinch of salt and pepper to taste. You can also finish them with chopped fresh herbs like thyme, parsley, chives, basil or mint. Adding crushed red pepper is good too.
Sauteed Honey Mushroom Caps and Stems
Ingredients
- 6 oz Long clusters of honey mushrooms and their attached stems
- Kosher salt and pepper
- 1-2 Tablespoons cooking oil or fat for sauteing like grapeseedm avocado, canola, etc.
- 1 clove garlic crushed with the back of a knife (optional)
- 1 small handful fresh thyme sprigs (optional)
Instructions
Clean the mushrooms
- Ideally your honey mushrooms are clean. If they look dirty at all, you'll want to rinse or swish them one at a time in some cool water, laying them out on paper towels to dry.
Cooking
- Trim the caps from the honey mushrooms and peel the stems. Cut the stems into bite sized pieces of about an inch.
- Heat the oil in a non-stick pan such as cast iron on medium-high heat and add the mushrooms. Cook stirring occasionally until the mushrooms are hot and have released their liquid, about 10 minutes.
- Turn down the heat to medium, then add the garlic and thyme if using.
- Add the remaining tablespoon of oil if needed and cook until the mushrooms are starting to brown.
- Add a good pinch of salt, stirring the pan to release any caps or stems that may have stuck.
- Continue cooking the mushrooms for another 5 minutes or so until they've started to color and are thoroughly cooked. When the mushrooms are golden and caramelized, taste a small piece, adjust the seasoning for salt, then serve.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
I cannot take credit for this method. I David Arora's book All The Rain Promises And More, he describes this very use of honey mushroom stems. When I read this for the first time though it was a revelation to me: "So thats how I can process and make use of that huge stem!"
After I tried this with honey mushrooms, I began to experiment with other types of mushrooms in the same family (Armillaria) that the honeys are in. Shiitake mushrooms are a great example. Typically people will just cut off the stem of shiitake and call it a day. If you have large cultivated specimens though, they may come with extra big stems. This method works as well for large stems like agaricus bisporus and its cousins from your grocery store (cremini, white button, portobello).
Charlie
I discovered them last year growing in fat bunches on downed logs and trees in several spots in a hill top park here in San Francisco. But last year I just photographed them. I went there today in December and they are back again. I brought home a few big ones and fried one in olive oil, salt and pepper for lunch with my BLT. Well suddenly I knew where the name Honey Mushroom came from. Seriously. A sweetish mushroom with all the imami or meaty flavor you would expect. But a distinct honey undertone! I fried it chopped up, one mushroom is pretty big, if you pick a big one, perfect for one person. Heat on high, a little oil, for a few minutes, not long. But if you are used to cooking mushrooms you kind of know when they are cooked. The only ones I've boiled are the big red ones with the white spots that have to be boiled for ten minutes before frying or they can poison you. And those were delicious. People complaining about mushy results. Well you need to pick a big solid mushroom and always check it for little maggots that are on some. But my experience is that a mushroom can handle heat as well as a steak can. Fry them too long and you just shrivel them up and make them too tough, not mushy. But you do want to cook them.
Alan Bergo
These are good notes. Thanks for sharing.
Len yanavich
Absolutely delicious
Alan Bergo
Thanks Len. I’m on a plane flying back to MN-there’s some honeys I picked before I left waiting to get cooked like this.
Brenna
I tried this recipe and they turned out super mushy... The texture was much like octopus... Did I not cook them long enough? Or did I use too much oil? Or are they supposed to be mushy?
Alan Bergo
They're likely undercooked, and after re-reading that recipe I can see it needed a little update for clarity.
Bob Ptak
Just learning about honey mushrooms. Trying to figure out whether to boil them or fry them
Alan Bergo
Try boiling them and adding to soup first.
Ann M Furdock
Many eastern Europeans use this mushroom, not just Russians & Ukranians. It is a standard in Holy Supper served in the meat- free Christmas Eve supper, an extremely important religious and cultural event. In those communities, the mushrooms are called popinki/papinki, a term more commonly used than the name you listed above. Drying was the most common way to save those mushrooms until Christmas Eve.
Alan Bergo
Ann, that's great! What kind of soup do you put them in for Christmas Eve?
Don Greenberg
Great website and recipes! Honey mushrooms make great duxelles I am fortunate to live near a staggeringly prolific honey mushroom patch, and make duxelles from 30 plus pounds per year. Tips from experience: 1) dry fry the mushrooms first to drive off much of the water. 2) don't need shallots, just adds to the bulk. These can sauted later and added in recipes where important. 3) slice rather than chop/puree mushrooms in food processor. Looks much nicer, and have a little mushroom texture. 4) place generous amounts of duxelle between skin and breast of a fowl, and roast it with Thomas Keller's chicken recipe. For the last 10 minutes, place some whole honey mushrooms in the roasting pan. Fab.
Alan Bergo
Honeys do make great duxelles! But. if you don't add shallots, and you slice the mushrooms and don't chop them, they're not duxelles--they're something different. Still delicious though.
Chris Neefus
Actually, Honey Mushrooms and Shiitakes are not in the same family.. The Honey Mushroom (Armillaria mellea) is in the family Physalacriaceae,while Shiitakes (Lentinula edodes) is in the family Omphalotaceae. Of course it doesn't change the fact that they are both delicious.
Jane Ward
Mine turned out great! I followed your instructions without any problems, I did put a lid on them off and on to keep it moister, but eventually all the moisture was driven off and the fats were absorbed. Delicious with chicken. I added some cream to make a sauce and it was perfect.
Elise
I echo Eric's sentiment about your page, here. I have hunted chanterelles and morels for years, but this mushroom popped up in my good friend's yard right about where a huge rhubarb plant used to be and when she posted a picture one person (not a mycologist) said it was poisonous. I posted it on the Northwest Mushroom identification forum and was happy to find out that when cooked, this mushroom quite edible. Anyway, I grabbed a handful off the bunch that was difficult to see that I had even taken any and they are waiting, as I write this, to be prepared.
Eric
Thanks I have been hunting edible mushrooms for many years. I have never tried honey mushrooms before but I have suspicions they were going in my back yard. I am doing a spore test now to be 100% sure. This is the first and only web site I have found that makes me comfortable.
Thanks Eric
K
I found some honeys this morning. Keyed them out and spore print was white. Going cook them now.