In Italy porcini (common name of Boletus edulis, Boletus aereus, Boletus aestivalis, Boletus pinophilus) and ovoli (Amanita caesarea) are a highly valued food and I love to look for them in the woods.
I know that this kind of mushrooms is also appreciated in England and I was curious about other Anglo-Saxon countries.
Do you go mushrooming? Do you have any stories about it? And what kind of recipes do you use, if any, to cook porcini mushrooms and Caesar’s mushrooms?
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I know a lady who went mushroom hunting with her husband (and children) because “he knew all about mushrooms!!”
One of the mushrooms he told her was fine to eat, ended up paralyzing her for the rest of her life.
We don’t have as big of a foraging or mycology culture as much of Europe.
There’s some mushroom hunters. I don’t know much about it. I know our mutual continents have deadly look alike mushrooms so you have to learn from someone very knowledgeable.
A lot of our green spaces are local, state, or national parkland and many impose restrictions on mushrooming.
Indiana’s Department of Natural Resources does allow mushroom picking for personal use on DNR lands. [They even made this handy pamphlet](https://www.in.gov/dnr/state-parks/files/sp-MushroomsBrochure.pdf).
My grandfather would forage morels.
I have a good friend that forages hen of the woods, black trumpets, and some others to sell to restaurants along with ramps and fiddleheads (the latter two are not mushrooms).
New England has a small foraging community but it is pretty active. There are some places near me where people do it.
I assume every single mushroom that isn’t in a grocery store or on a pizza is insanely dangerous lol
You might have better responses on /r/foraging, it’s a bit of a niche hobby here.
Morels are the ones that people go nuts for and go out foraging in search of. I know a few people that go out for them, but it’s not too common. The people that do it tend to be really into it in my experience.
In many places in the US, the most popular mushrooms to forage are chanterelles. They’re delicious, fairly common, and hard to mistake for anything else.
Side note: Id like a lil more mycology/foraging culture around here. Its a cool idea to me to go out and get fresh mushrooms while im hunting or just going through the woods. But im just as likely to find a cottonmouth as i am to find edible mushrooms
There are some very dangerous American mushrooms, and every year a few people die from mistaking a lethal species for an edible one. Also, there aren’t a lot of wild spaces near most people – urban or suburban life in the US doesn’t have a lot of easily available places to gather wild foods legally.
No. I do not go mushrooming. I don’t eat mushrooms, either. I have enormous ones growing in my yard, though.
The only mushrooms I forage for are morels. I’m not confident enough in my mycology knowledge to do much else.
We have a lot of poisonous mushrooms, not just ones that will make you have a bad night but ones that will kill or cripple your ability to function and require organ transplants to survive. We also have hallucinogenic mushrooms and the poisonous ones bother are very easily mistaken for edible and safe ones and even experts have trouble distinguishing them. So wild mushrooming is not as popular among the wider untrained population but is popular among a smaller section of people who out of passion or necessity learn how to distinguish edible and non edible in the wild.
I do a bit of foraging, but I don’t touch the mushrooms. Too risky. Maybe if I found an expert who’d let me shadow them for a season or two, but I’ve heard enough horror stories (including death) that I don’t really even want to.
I’m much more confident in my ability to ID plants out of books and I know people I can ask questions of as needed.
I’ve heard of people foraging for morels.
I live in the state that produces the most mushrooms agriculturally (almost 50% of the US total). We have seven edible wild mushrooms: king bolete (cep), morels, chicken of the woods, shaggy mane, horn of plenty and oyster.
Mushrooming is generally discouraged unless you are an expert or accompanied by one. The majority of mushrooms here are toxic and many are potentially lethal. Some of them look similar to edible kinds.
I do not have enough knowledge on the subject to do so safely so assume all mushrooms not in a grocery store are poisonous.
People in Midwest definitely go mushrooming, usually for morel mushrooms
I know a lot of people who forage for morels and (much less commonly) sheepheads
Some people go mushrooming but it’s not widespread at all. I would *love* to learn that skill, but I don’t want to learn online; I’d want a real expert!
We can purchase many different types of mushrooms though, especially if you happen to live near a Korean or Chinese supermarket. The one near me sells fresh shitake (my favorite!), fresh oyster, and many other types, for $5.99/pound. I haven’t seen fresh porcini anywhere, and have only had them dried. Never heard of Caesar’s mushroom. It looks delish!
r/shrooms
Hi. I live in Massachusetts and hike a lot and it’s mushroom time right now. I would say it used to be common, less so over the years, but a little bit of a resurgence.
Morels are probably the most prized but I am going to be on the look out for honey mushrooms – my housekeeper from Poland loves them. When I hike at this time we see people with bags to collect. Last year I talked to a sweet old Italian man who showed me the few varieties he collected.
I don’t know of anyone that goes looking for mushrooms
I would love to go! Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone who’s into foraging and mushrooms are scary since so many are poisonous and look almost identical to edible mushrooms.
I hunt morels and similar ones every spring . The only way I’ve ever heard of them being cooked, is battered and fried
One of my younger brothers loves to go mushrooming but I think you guys are using them differently.
“Cep” is a Britishism, every grocery store calls them porcini (or often porcinis, sorry for that pluralization). A certain segment mushroom hunts, especially for morels. Chicken of the woods and hen of the woods are also popular, all 3 for taste but especially since it’s very hard to misidentify these. I’ve never heard of Caesar’s mushrooms, but despite popular belief we do have native truffles in the PNW.
Foraging for mushrooms in my area is extremely dangerous without an experienced guide and a good guide book in hand. The Eastern US has many species of very poisonous mushrooms that are quite plain looking, and often look similar to edible mushrooms from other parts of the world. Every decade or so there’s a sad story of an entire immigrant family dying in a group poisoning because they went foraging without understanding the danger of North American mushrooms. Mushroom poisoning is typically a terrible way to die.
I hunt for some mushrooms. My personal favorite wild mushroom is the morel. I’m one of the only people I know who hunts mushrooms, though.