With it’s bright red cap and white spots, the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) is probably the most well known of all wild mushrooms in the world. It’s also one of the only mushrooms I know that I would call edible, hallucinogenic and potentially poisonous. While many people in North America know it as the…
Gilled Mushrooms
The gills of Entoloma abortivum.
"Gilled Mushrooms" may seem a hilariously broad name to professionals in the mushroom world, but, I find it helpful for categorizing edibles, especially when working with people new to wild mushrooms since many gilled mushrooms are more difficult to identify than, say, a bright orange chicken of the woods. Here you'll find recipes and information on a wide range of species and genera, all having gills.
How to Make Shaggy Mane Mushroom Ink
“Leave mushrooms on the counter until they turn into a black, inky mess, then puree this goop and eat it” sounds like instructions in a recipe for someone on a quest to make themselves sick. For the unfamiliar, Shaggies are part of a group of mushrooms called inky caps because the mushrooms quickly turn to…
The Blusher: Amanita amerirubescens
I ate my first mushroom from the Amanita amerirubescens group this year, but it wasn’t the first time I’d met them, or collected them. As many of you know, the often-avoided genus has a number of lethally poisonous mushrooms, as well as some very well known edibles in it. I first found them first 3…
Hunting the Minnesota Matsutake: II
I got a fever, and the only prescription, is more matsutake! Bonus points if you read that with Christopher Walken narrating. Hunting matsutake in Minnesota, or the Midwest in general seemed like an unknown thing until a few years ago, with the exception of a few talented experts I know of like Tavis Lynch from…
Dried Saffron Milk Cap or Lactarius Broth
Snow is on the ground, and that means it’s time to start working through the mushroom stash. The first thing in my queue was a simple broth with shrimp dumplings based on an old recipe I used to run as a deep fried fish cake appetizer. The dumplings were just for fun since I was…
Matsutake Miso Soup
I can still taste the first bowl of miso soup I ever had. It was at a higher-ish end Tepanyaki restaurant chain called Benihana, one of those places where they have a cook make the food in front of you on a grill set in the table-it’s a great place to bring dates. Before all…
Wild Mushroom Conserve with Walnut Oil
I have a lot of different ways I like to preserve mushrooms I’ve learned or come up with myself over the years. This method is one of the more interesting ones, and, I can’t take credit for it. When I started working at Heartland, with it’s daily changing menu that the staff collaboratively designed, one…
Whole Seared Matsutake, Medium-Rare
When we think of how to cook mushrooms, generally the thought process is they should be cooked through, then you proceed with whatever dish you’re making. Rarely, there might be some special wild mushrooms you can eat raw, like porcini, Amanita caesarea, or my little matsutake here, if any of them aren’t horribly bug riddled,…
