Fall is the time to forage for wild mushrooms
Fall is the best season to forage for wild mushrooms. After a parched summer, many culinary mushrooms fruit following cool, autumn rains. Delicious and highly prized varieties such as chanterelles, porcini, and pine mushrooms (matsutake) are plentiful, an
GO WITH AN EXPERT
If you’re new to hunting wild mushrooms, going out with an expert is an invaluable introduction.
Douglastown, Que.-based Gérard Mathar of Gaspésie Sauvage says it’s best to learn how to forage firsthand, and not simply rely on a guidebook or photos.
Find experts in your area who run workshops or join your local mycological society.
“I pick what I know. There are always mushrooms that are harder to identify. You cannot learn that in just one or two weeks, even following a workshop. But it’s a start,” Mathar says.
PICK WITH CERTAINTY
Foraging yields flavours you can’t find in a grocery store, but the catch is that you have to know with absolute certainty what you’re picking.
Identifying both culinary mushrooms and poisonous look-alikes specific to your area is essential.
Naturalist and novelist Peter Blush of Stratford, Ont.’s Puck’s Plenty makes a point of highlighting look-alikes on his foraging tours.
He offers the example of the edible velvet foot (enokitake), and its resemblance to the poisonous and appropriately named, deadly galerina.
They can often be found growing side-by-side on fallen hardwood.
“They’re both brown, they both grow in clusters, but the big difference is the spores — that’s the reproductive part of the mushroom.
“The spores of the deadly galerina are brown to black, and the velvet foot has very active white spores. You can usually see them all over the mushroom cap, so that’s a good qualifier right there,” Blush says.
ESSENTIAL TOOLS
Vancouver-based chef Robin Kort has been leading foraging walks for the past seven years through her company Swallow Tail.
She likes to carry a foldable knife for harvesting, and recommends a basket for collecting (so spores can shake through to the forest floor as you walk) and a hand mirror to help with identifying mushrooms.
“As you begin hunting for mushrooms, a lot of the time you’re trying to figure out what that mushroom is. And if there’s only one mushroom in the forest, then you don’t want to pick it. You just want to look underneath it to see if it has gills or pores, or what colour the gills are,” Kort says.
HOW AND WHERE TO HARVEST
There are different camps on whether you should gently ease the mushroom out of the ground or cut the stem.
“Personally, I (ease them out) because some mushrooms might be buried in the ground, so you lose part of it. Like the swollen-stalked cat — it’s a big, white mushroom — it’s heavy and half of the stem may be in the ground. So if you just cut, you lose half of it,” Mathar says.
Harvesting wild mushrooms is prohibited in national, provincial and regional parks, but permitted on Crown (public) land. Foraging on private property, leased Crown land, and traditional territory requires permission.
For a sustainable harvest, don’t gather more than you can use.
“I like to only pick 30 per cent of what I see, that’s my general rule. Mushrooms are beautiful, so you want them out there for people to see,” Kort says.
STORE THEM PROPERLY
Store your mushrooms in a paper bag in the fridge. Paper absorbs moisture, keeping the mushrooms fresh longer. Wild mushrooms are best eaten within the first three days of harvest, but will keep for up to a week.
Mushrooms such as chanterelles can be sautéed and frozen, while other varieties are bettersuited to drying in a dehydrator or at a low temperature in the oven.
“Each mushroom has its own special techniques. Porcinis and morels dry really well. Morels dry so well that when you reconstitute them, they’re almost the same as fresh. I like drying porcinis because it intensifies the flavour and then I use them in stocks,” Kort says.
PREPARE WITH CARE
Clean mushrooms as you need them. Use a paring knife, brush or tea towel to remove any dirt and debris that wasn’t removed outdoors during harvest.
There are different perspectives on the right way to clean mushrooms. “The less water the better, usually, except with the more durable mushrooms like lobsters or morels,” Kort says.
ENJOY THE JOURNEY
Foraging is a way to connect with nature — with culinary benefits. “I love to take people who are going out for the first time. They’re full of anticipation. I watch their faces upon their first discovery and it’s just precious to see,” Blush says.