Lobster mushroooms start to fruit heavy in late summer right when gardens and vegetables are at their peak of production. I don’t have a garden, but I gather from one often, and when the squash, corn, peppers, broccoli, greens, onion, potatoes and all the other good things start to go crazy; they demand to be…
Lobster Mushrooms
A fascinating creation of nature, lobster mushrooms are the result of a fungus parisitizing Russula and/or Lactarius mushrooms that changes their shape, improves their flavor, and gives them a bright red-orange color. These are incredibly versatile mushrooms, and highly appreciated by chefs and sold commercially in large quantities. They can also be found in large quantities by you.
If you're new to lobsters, check out my intro to lobster mushrooms. If you have some you'd like to cook, try my lobster mushroom cakes or lobster rolls first and branch out from there.
Lobster Mushroom Rice Pilaf
It can be tricky to get lobster mushrooms to take on a flavor that resembles their name. Cooked fresh, they need a little help sometimes. They fruit heavily during their season where I live in Minnesota, and I’ve found myself with more than I can use within a few days after picking plenty of times….
Lobster Mushroom Cakes (Video)
Here’s another fun video from photographer Chris Bohnhoff and myself. We’ve been trying to shoot a couple videos each year together as a collaborative/creative project. We both have our main gigs, Chris being a professional shooter of photos and video, and myself running the Salt Cellar. Even so, if you’ve ever known a creative, you…
Lobster Mushroom Cakes
Nothings says a good morning like a bag of giant lobster mushrooms. Their size can be stunning, along with their heartiness against bugs. But, when push comes to shove, they can be bland simply fried up in a pan, compared with something like a morel or a chanterelle which can be at their best cooked…
Lobster Mushroom Hollandaise
This happened during a night in the kitchen at Heartland. It was one of those days where the other guys on the line and I would shoot ideas back and forth during service, trying to come up with the best things to make with what the season gave us. That night, we were in the…
Stuffed Giant Lobster Mushrooms
After lobster season has been at it for a while, you can find some really large mushrooms. The shape of lobsters can be irregular, but you can always count on a couple here and there that are big and concave-more than once I’ve heard my friends refer to them as giant tacos. If you’re like…
Swordfish With Lobster Mushroom Stuffing
This is what happens when you have extra swordfish samples laying around, and need to start using up duxelles from a great lobster mushroom season. I can’t remember where I got the idea, but I’ve been making this for years. Here’s the jist: you take a thin piece of swordfish in the middle of each…
Lobster Mushroom Infused Butter
This is hands down one of the coolest things I discovered cooking with lobster mushrooms. Here’s the story. I was on the line at Heartland one evening. It wasn’t so busy that I couldn’t work on some projects in my spare time, so I set about trying to preserve some of the haul of lobster…