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

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Sweet and Sour Venison-Honey Mushroom Soup

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sweet and sour venison soup with honey mushroom recipe

Hot and sour soup! Is it Asian food? Nope. Asian cuisine is not the only one to take advantage of the awesome combination of sweet and sour. There is another locale that values the combo of sweet and sour, and it’s Eastern Europe.

Just thinking about a bowl of sour, sweet, meaty soup makes my mouth water, it just hits you in all the right places. My mind often wonders what the mushroom picking Russians in the Twin Cities are making with all of their honeys and slippery jacks, so this is a recipe I came up with in their honor.

Eastern Europe’s love for slippery jacks is well documented, see another post on that here. Another one of their favorites, and a slightly superior mushroom in my eyes is the honey mushroom, or as they call it “pidpenky”. There are a bunch of different varieties, but you can narrow it down to two different types if you see which tree they are growing on/near.

If they are growing on a deciduous tree they will be a particular set of species, growing on or around a conifer will mean they’re another, and will usually lack a ring around the stem.

 nbI won’t even try to classify or act like I know all the varieties of honey mushrooms out there because I don’t. Lets just say that finding the tree they are infecting is not that difficult, these things can be the scourge of a forest, and look like an infection. I know a couple of local hunting patches that are severely infected with honey mushrooms.

Some people in the mycological societies poo poo honeys, or ban them from potlucks, and that’s understandable since some people might be allergic to them. Its true too that they are not as easy to identify as a chicken of the woods, or a morel for that matter. Either way, I have eaten every species of honey mushroom I have ever picked, and I have loved everyone. Just make sure to cook them thoroughly.

Back to the soup, I made a small test batch just to test the seasoning for you. I ate the whole thing in 2 sittings, its simple, cheap, and is a great way to stretch a small amount of meat, such as that old venison roast that has been sitting in your fridge that your hunter friend gave you a while back. Do make sure to thoroughly cook your honey mushrooms, as they can give some people GI problems undercooked.

sweet and sour venison soup with honey mushrooms
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Sweet and Sour Venison Soup with Honey Mushrooms

Tart and only slightly sweet, this is an Eastern European style soup with venison and honey mushrooms.
Prep Time30 mins
Cook Time1 hr 30 mins
Course: Main Course, Soup
Cuisine: German, Russian
Keyword: Honey Mushrooms, Sweet and Sour Soup, Vension
Servings: 4

Ingredients

  • 1.5 lbs venison such as top round or a roast, diced into 1/2 inch squares
  • 1 lb green cabbage. you could use napa or savoy cabbage, if you do, increase the volume by 50%-it cooks down to near nothing.
  • 2/3 cup grapeseed or canola oil for browning the venison
  • 3 cloves garlic sliced
  • 3 tbsp tomato paste
  • 1 cup diced white onion
  • 7 cups water or meat stock I was in a pinch and used water, and that's fine if you're pressed for time, the venison meat adds flavor in itself
  • 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar you could also substitute champagne, or just plain white
  • 3 tbsp sugar or honey
  • Bouquet garni:
  • 2 crushed juniper berries 1 dried bay leaf 10 peppercorns, 2 allspice berries, 3 cloves
  • 1 lb fresh honey mushrooms trimmed of their stems, leaving about 1/2 inch remaining below the cap
  • Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
  • Fresh herb of your choice for garnishing such as chives or fresh dill

Instructions

  • Get a 6 qt stock or pasta pot, begin by heating the pan with half of the oil, when the oil begins to smoke lightly, add the venison, season with salt and pepper, and cook on high heat until nicely brown and colored, working in small batches if necessary. (If it gets smokey in your kitchen, open the window.) Remove all of the venison from the pot so you can pour out the oil, (it is most likely scorched and burnt after all that browning and will make your soup greasy), although the bottom of the pot better not be scorched, since thats where much of your flavor is going to come from for the soup.
  • Add the onion and garlic to the pot and cook, stirring occasionally until its translucent, then add the water or stock, cabbage, venison, bouquet garni, and bring to a simmer.
  • Brown the mushrooms (optional)
  • while the soup is heating, heat a large 10 saute pan with the remaining 1/3 cup of oil and brown the honey mushrooms on high heat, working in batches so that you don't over crowd the pan. When all the mushrooms have been browned nicely, drain them on a towel to remove oil, then add them to the soup pot.
  • Cook the soup for 1.5 hours. After that, the meat should be tender and soft. Finish the soup by adjusting the salt and pepper to taste, add the sugar and vinegar as well.Serve garnished with some chives or chopped dill, parsley would be just fine too.

Notes

*Notes*
This is just a basic soup, adding cooked barley, millet, or rice would be great additions. To add a grain, add 1 cup cooked grain of your choice at the end of cooking, or 1/2 cup raw when starting to cook the soup. To keep the broth clear and preserve the texture of grains, I like to add them precooked at the end of cooking, your choice though.
If you want you could add the honey mushroom stems to the soup as well, I'm a fiend for the caps though, so I used only them since I had a great excess.
Serves 2, you will get about 2 qts  from this recipe
Prep Time: 30 minutes to clean mushrooms, dice meat, chop cabbage and a couple vegetables.
Cook Time: 2 hours

More 

Honey Mushrooms

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Sam Schaperow

    February 17, 2014 at 6:04 pm

    OK, I think I can help w/some clarification(s):
    Honeys are poo pooed for 3 reasons:
    1. 1st, I don’t believe there’s a conclusion they’re allergenic (an immune system response), but a limited # of species classified on the common name “honey” may cause ~mild illness in people due to issues w/digestion & sensitivity, however few to none would experience the same when cooked well. Some go so far as to parboil 1st. But, parboiling all species, including those of no close relation to mushrooms that cause problems makes little sense to me.
    2. A good # of mycological societies are very fear-based on decision making, which overrides their scientific minded thinking, so they’ll ban various mushrooms or even people.
    3. A limited # of honeys are harmful to live trees, but this issue is then applied to honeys that aren’t….
    4. Some don’t taste good to enough people, w/o a lot of cover-up creams or other sauces added, but again the species makes a pretty big difference.

    More info. can be found in the archives of MushroomTalk (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/MushroomTalk/info), where I’ve discussed these points before.

    Sam Schaperow

    Reply
    • Alan Bergo

      February 18, 2014 at 9:58 am

      Hey Sam, thanks for the info. The reason I suggest parboiling here is only because of the mucilage I have found the species here contain. When cooked in water or in a pickle liquid without a preliminary cooking they make the whole thing slimy. Have you experienced anything like that? When sauteeing I do not treat them differently than any other mushroom.

      Reply
  2. Cindy Caudell

    October 6, 2016 at 2:07 pm

    Can you make mushroom broth with honey mushrooms? I was thinking of freezing some, but I can’t seem to find anything about it online.

    Reply
    • Kat

      October 9, 2020 at 4:35 pm

      I’m wondering the same thing! The broth from boiling them smells delicious.

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Hunting and cooking honey mushrooms, honey fungus, or Armillaria mellea says:
    October 22, 2020 at 12:15 pm

    […] mucilage will help give body to soups. See below on mucilage for more on that, or refer to my hot and sour soup, or honey mushroom gulyas for […]

    Reply

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Alan Bergo
Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each Morels: the only wild mushroom I count by the each instead of the pound. 

Good day today, although my Twin Cities spots seem a full two weeks behind from the late spring. 2 hours south they were almost all mature. 

76 for me and 152 for the group. Check your spots, and good luck! 

#morels #murkels #mollymoochers #drylandfish #spongemushroom #theprecious
The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natu The first time I’ve seen fungal guttation-a natural secretion of water I typically see with plants. 

I understand it as an indicator that the mushrooms are growing rapidly, and a byproduct of their metabolism speeding up. If you have some clarifications, chime in. 

Most people know it from Hydnellum 
peckii-another polypore. I’ve never seen it on pheasant backs before.

Morels are coming soon too. Mine were 1 inch tall yesterday in the Twin Cities. 

#guttation #mushroomhunting #cerioporussquamosus #pheasantback #naturesbeauty
Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a Rain and heat turned the flood plain forest into a grocery store. 

#groceryshopping #sochan #rudbeckialaciniata #foraging
Italian wild food traditions are some of my favori Italian wild food traditions are some of my favorite. 

Case in point: preboggion, a mixture of wild plants, that, depending on the reference, should be made with 5-23 individual plants. 

Here’s a few mixtures I’ve made this spring, along with a reference from the Oxford companion to Italian food. 

The mixture should include some bitter greens (typically assorted asters) but the most important plant is probably borage. 

Making your own version is a good excercise. Here they’re wilted with garlic and oil, but there’s a bunch of traditional recipes the mixture is used in. 

Can you believe this got cut from my book?!

#preboggion #preboggiun #foraging #traditionalfoods
Oh the things I get in the mail. This is my kind Oh the things I get in the mail. 

This is my kind of tip though: a handmade buckskin bag with a note and a handful of bleached snapping turtle claws. 😁😂 

Sent in by Leslie, a reader. 

Smells like woodsmoke and the cat quickly claimed it as her new bed. 

#buckskin #mailsurprise #turtleclaws #thisimylife #cathouse
Bluebell season. Destined for a Ligurian ravioli Bluebell season. 

Destined for a Ligurian ravioli as a replacement for the traditional borage greens. 

#mertensiavirginica #virginiabluebells #spring #foraging
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