I love hedgehog mushrooms (especially the giant ones) but during the off-season here in Minnesota I sometimes cook with the smaller Hydnum umbilicatum sold commercially out of the PNW during our winter when I have a craving for fresh mushrooms. Hedgehogs are great in just about anything you’d add them to, but I love them…
Chanterelles
Cantharellus phasmatis, (pictured from Minnesota) is one of the finest mushrooms in the world.
Chanterelles and their friends: various types of golden chanterelles, yellowfoot chanterelles, black trumpets, red chanterelles, and others. If you're new to chants, check out my basic guide to golden chanterelles. If you have some you'd like to cook, try them wet sauteed, or in just about any wild mushroom recipe on this website, especially mushrooms cooked with garlic and parsley and in a simple chanterelle pasta.
Chanterelle Spaghetti with Roasted Garlic-Wine Sauce
Earlier this year my former chef, friend, and mentor Chef Andy Lilja gave me a ring during chanterelle season to tell me how awesome his dinner was. Some of my favorite recipes are those from my chef friends, either restaurant staples, or things that they make at home, and I keep track of them whenever…
Wild Mushroom Fricasee Fredy Girardet
Old cookbooks are a wealth of knowledge. Back in the day, it didn’t matter how many art directors were on set for the photo shoot, and how many different plate props you had, good food was just good food. One of my favorite old books is Fredy Girardet, a famous Swiss chef who reached the…
Baked Fish with Black Trumpet Crust
When Sitka Salmon sent me loads of fish to cook with this year in preparation for a project we were working on, I started working on a few great ways to use frozen fish, especially white-fleshed fish like black rockfish and cod. Making a topping with dried black trumpets, leeks and tomatoes was one of…
Salted Wild Mushrooms in Brine
Once I started reading about traditional ways to preserve mushrooms around the world, one of the first ones I came across was salted wild mushrooms, an old stand-by used in plenty of places, but most notably Eastern Europe. It’s not that popular in America, but one trip to a market with an Eastern European ownership…
Cooking Wild Mushrooms with the Wet Saute
A while ago a video on cooking mushrooms started circulating in the online community that turned a lot of heads, at least in my world. In a nutshell, the video discussed the benefits in depth (see the video) of adding water to mushrooms before they’re sautéed. At first, I thought l “ok science guy, the…
Scallopini with Pickled Wild Mushrooms and Brown Butter
I tell people over and over to make mushroom conserve when they have a great harvest of small buttons, especially chanterelles: golden chanterelles, hedgehogs, blue chanterelles especially, although lobster mushrooms and polypores like chickens, hens, and Ischnoderma work good too. See the master recipe for mushroom conserve here. The reason isn’t because I eat pickled…
Cerulean Black Trumpets
The best part of hunting mushrooms are the random things you stumble across. You might be getting skunked, with not a mushroom to be found, then out of nowhere a pile of somethings jump out to save the day, or, more likely, you just find a fungus that you have no idea what it is,…
