Dry your own mushrooms
Comments(21)
Despite being given the ultimate mushroom identification bible Mushrooms by Roger Phillips
Our friends Jocelyn and Miles have found this when they gather mushrooms in France. But they pick away with gay abandon.
You might be thinking “Are they mad? Or were they mad?”
No, they are pretty sane and take advantage of a free service that pharmacies offer all over France. You can totter in with your baskets and they will sort them into safe and poisonous. It’s a free service.
It is such a shame that we don’t offer a similar service in the UK.
Joanna’s Food had a fascinating post on an expert identifying the mushrooms in her garden a few weeks ago. Well worth a peek.
We are drying mushroom here at the cottage. Danny discovered a punnet of shitake mushrooms when he was foraging in what he calls the Tesco “condemned food section”. Dried mushrooms last for up to two years and are fabulous for tossing into a rich stew to add an extra dimension, or rehydrating in boiling water for five minutes to eat with pasta or a stir fry.
All you do is string the mushrooms on strong thread (use a darning needle). Hang the mushrooms in a warm airy room for a couple of weeks until they feel dry. Store them in a paper bag for a week or so to guarantee that all moisture has been eradicated and then keep them in an airtight box until you need them. If the mushrooms start to go mouldy in the airtight container they have not been dried enough so throw them away.
The trick to successful drying is to give them enough time to dry out completely – ours sit in the airing cupboard for ten days after drying on the thread. By the time that they go into the airtight container they look very shrivelled and unappetising but they puff up miraculously when added to boiling water.
Thank you for your comments. And a bit of silly bath time fun with the Frothing Sea Monster trick!
Cutting energy costs
Recipe for sausages baked with herby garlic infused beans, bacon and tomato
Tracing some of my ancestors has taken me on a long journey
Recipe for lamb shanks braised in red wine with shallots: slow cooker/crockpot
The cupboard was bare – so what was The Contessa going to eat last night?
HG
Fiona, I too wonder about the mushrooms I see here, but won’t pick as I too am afraid of them. I used to go mushroom hunting in the US. We would go every year around Mothers day(May) and pick Morels. I knew of a great patch. Was thinking of trying to look for them here next spring. They are about the only ones I am 100percent on identifying.
Giant Puffballs and Shaggy Inkcaps (young – before they go inky) are the only ones I have cast iron confidence in ID-ing and eating. Puffballs are so huge perhaps next time we’ll try drying slices.
When I bought a bag of dried Porcini in northern Italy, the girl in the shop told me to put a few whole black peppercorns in the packet as this would make them keep better. It works… or does it? Should have divided them into two bags for a controlled test! Have you heard of this?
I agree mushroom do look very similar. I think anyone who can identify edible mushrooms is to be admired. Sara from farmingfriends
Great tip, I shall fo that next time we have.
I’ve only ever had the courage to pick and eat a giant Puffball that we found last Autumn. To be honest we didn’t think it tasted that great and it lasted for ages because it was so big, we felt we had to keep eating it.
we went out on a mammoth walk the other day and found loads of mushrooms. i even took pictures of them in the hopes of identifying them with a book i got from my mil – no chance! no matter how hard i tried the difference between the edible, the do not eats and the poisonous was no way clear enough for me to risk it!
Thanks for the link, Fiona. Still haven’t had any mushrooms here, despite better weather for them. Amanda I’m amazed the puffball didn’t taste of much, perhaps it was a little old when you found it … you need to pick them young and firm, then slice them into thick steaks and fry them with some garlic. Writing that makes me feel VERY sad that I haven’t yet found one this year
Very good tip for drying fungi, if we ever see any;)
Joanna
Hi Pat,
What a lovely picture, picking morels on Mother’s Day!
Hi Celia,
I am going to try putting peppercorns in with the dried mushrooms. I haven’t heard of this but the Italians are pretty clued up when it comes to storing stuff well.
Hi Farming Friends,
I am so keen to learn more about identifying mushrooms.
Hi Amanda,
I’ve searched and searched for puffballs but always drawn a blank.
Hi Barbara,
Glad to hear that you had the same problem as me. I am going to try and find a local forager, with a knowledge of mushrooms and learn from them.
Hi Joanna,
Your post is very interesting and I have thought about it on and off since I read it.
Thanks for dropping by!
The Roger Phillips book is the fungus book of my dreams- wonderful.My mother and I used to eat (very young) ink caps and meadow puffballs, my father never dared and would just watch us- he said someone had to be well enough to take us to casualty. She was pretty clued up on identifying bona fide edible mushrooms as she had picked since childhood- but I wouldn’t dream of doing it! The inkcaps and puffballs weren’t fabulous,the puffballs, we felt, were a bit like eating gas mains, so we decided in the end to stick to mushrooms: just because something is edible doesn’t necessarily mean you would choose to eat it… unless you were really hungry and nothing else was available!
We were with my cousin and he actually found two. He was literally dancing and singing with joy that he’d found them. He said the last time he found them was about six years ago. We found one broken, rotten one when we were blackberry picking a few weeks ago.
I have had the Roger Phillips book for many years – it is really good. However, the best bet is to go with someone really knowledgable – an organised fungal foray (The forestry commission, NT, local nature reserves all do them) is always a good start – and learn how to identify two or three really good species…doesn’t really matter what, just know them with your eyes shut (so to speak). Once you can identify a few common edible ones (and the really poisonous ones) without fail, you can ignore the more tricky grey-area ones and still be able to harvest a good basket of ‘wildies’.
Hi Kate (uk)
I love the idea of eating gas mains…
I am determined to find someone who knows about mushrooms even if it means advertising i the Parish Magazine!
Hi Amanda,
I am so envious that you have a cousin that knows about mushrooms! My cousins appeared for my twenty first birthday party and then vanished for ever more. Was it the wine or possibly it could have been the mushrooms?
Hi Richard,
Great advice. Good idea to get to know mushrooms slowly – a few at a time. Why try and learn a whole “new language” in an afternoon. Thanks.
. Thanks.
Do you have to put them in an air tight container? Once dreid shouldn’t they be okay left out?
Hi Gutta,
They need to be put in something as they’d get very dusty left out. When I buy dried mushrooms they are in cellophane bags so a tin, an old envelope or heavy duty bag would probably do. I just tend to bung most things into airtight containers as this almost guarantees to hold the flavour.
Good morning!
I am threading my branching oyster mushrooms. We have a massive fallen willow in the garden and they grow in ‘a bun dance’ on it. Last year I was too unsure to pick any. This year did a very through bit of research and a spore print which verified them as branching oysters. A spore print is dead easy-put a good sized specimin gills down on a sheet of white paper with a glass over the top held slightly open by resting on a coin. The book said the print should be lilac and sure enough after leaving over night a beautiful lilac print appeared.
All this rain has brought lots and lots of mushrooms (i read you can get a fifth the weight of the wood over time the log must weigh several tonnes!)so I’ve made pate from almonds, garlic and corriander, and am now drying loads.
The book wasn’t too complimentary about the taste of branching oyster (Pleurotus cornucopiae) the book says they are plain edible rather than tasty but they are good with plenty of other flavours.
I put the mushrooms on newspaper and left them for about a week before threading to avout tearing. Now they look lovely hanging near the stove!
Hi Adam
You lucky man!
They might not be tasty but they are free food!
Interesting to read about the spore print.
Thanks for your comment, a great addition to the knowledge base.
Yes go with someone who knows. Blewits are not able to be confused with anything else.
Shaggy Inkcaps are at their best raw. The first time of eating a wild mushroom try only a small mouthfull, never mix them!!!!!!!! until you have had them separately a few times.
Lots of fun looks to be a good year
Hi Jeff
I don’t know anyone who knows – yet. I loved eating the feild mushrooms that I was given a couple of weeks ago.
HFW has an online course that you can do for far less cash than the hands on day courses. Perhaps I should do that!
Thanks for your advice.
Hi everyone, does anyone have good info on the giant puffballs? We have a horse farm and since we moved in last spring, we have been getting giant puffballs but about the size of a softball but I didn’t know enough to pick and eat them, I knew what they were and that they were edible. Today after doing chores I happened upon the biggest one so far this year it’s larger than a volleyball. It’s still pure white, I haven’t picked and cut it up yet but will it be tasty at this size if it’s still solid white right through? There is so much of it that I will likely freeze it. But a puffball this size can’t be confused with any poisonous ones can it?? Thanks for any help that may be out there!
Found you while looking for info on how to dry muchrooms – bought cheaply in the ‘left for dead’ section of Aldi. It seems surprisingly easy and I am going to get on with it.
Just a thought, years ago while working in a Poisons Unit I overheard a recently poisoned mushroom eater being told to keep at least one uncooked sample of what you have picked and are about to eat in a bag in the fridge – just in case of an emergency admission following consumption. It is incredibly difficult to idenfity vomited mushrooms!
Roger Phillips is an excellent book but it is by no means comprehensive. If you are wanting to eat wild fungi you should use several books. Mushrooms are notorously variable and the information in the books is not always imparted in a user-friendly way, so it is possible to overlook a crucial identification feature such as smell, gill shape or colour-change. I spent many years looking at and learning fungi to practise identification skills before ‘graduating’ on to eating those I was sure of. Let’s not be in a big hurry just because some taste nice.
I actually feel that your friends in France are being incredibly lazy and that it is wrong to pick with abandon and then pass on the responsibility to someone else to sort them for you. The service is meant for a culture that values its food and the effort required to obtain it and it is there to avoid accidents rather than pander to people who can’t be bothered to learn. It makes me feel embarrasssed to be British.
Hello Steve
Good point to have several books. A DVD would be useful as well.
Our friends in France have learnt over the years through using this service and now only use it when they can’t identify a ‘new to them’ mushroom. They also have books.