Little Green Book

Foraging for mushrooms is an excellent way of getting some delicious food for free. Have a look below for our guide to foraging courses, as well as our hints on where to buy wild mushrooms, where to eat them and how to cook them. We've also included some more information on identifying common types for the enthusiast.

You can also nominate a foraging course, restaurant or place to buy wild food to be FoodLovers Approved.

Where to forage for mushrooms

Fungi Foraging is the new Freeganism...
In Autumn, mushrooms and berries will be at their best. Check out mushroom, wild food foraging and outdoor survival courses around Britain below and remember to book early - they're always popular.

• Food Safari offers both Wild Food Days foraging in the coast and countryside and Seafood Days catching and cooking while river fishing.
• If you thought foraging was just mushrooms, Wild Man Wild Food  will give you food for thought.
• Explore the countryside with Taste the Wild - foraging and cooking combinded.
• Forage for all kinds of edible treats, then find out how to cook them as part of Fat Hen's gourmet and foraging weekends.
• Forays and fungi walks around Greater London are available until late November from Fungi to Be With
• Forage your way through the countryside at The Wild Food School.
• Join Chris Bax at Swinton Park for a ramble around the countryside, foraging for wild food before a cook-up for lunch.
• Wilderness Survival Skills take foraging to a new level with outdoor survival courses, including cathcing fish and game.

Where to buy wild mushrooms

"If the thought of picking wild mushrooms terrifies you, do try the dried wild mushrooms you see in the shops. Even a few will transform your dish." Henrietta

If you're too time-stressed to forage, why not get someone else to do the hard work? Mrs Tee's Wild Mushrooms come fresh from the woodland in Hampshire.

Explore FoodFinds for more places to buy mushrooms.

How to cook wild mushrooms

Have a look at the following recipes for wild mushrooms from our recipe pages:

Chanterelle & Porcini Tart                     Cod baked with Wild Mushrooms

Braised Lamb with Morels & Madeira     Braised Pork with Wild Mushrooms

Wild Mushroom & Butterbean Soup       Wild Mushroom & Goats Cheese Frittata

You could also have a look in the following books to find some more recipes:

Jane Grigson's The Mushroom Feast
Mushroom by Johnny Acton & Nick Sandler
Our Little Green Book of Home Grown Harvests

More about wild mushrooms

If you are passionate about wild food, in particular wild mushrooms, and you want a good resource to help you with identifying wild mushrooms, try wildmushroomsonline.

Here's how to get started...

Cep or Porcini

Porcini (Boletus edulis, the taxonomic name) is a highly regarded edible mushroom. It has a number of English names, including cep (from its Catalan name cep or its French name cèpe), king bolete and penny bun. A common term in current use is porcini. This mushroom has a distinct aroma reminiscent of fermented dough. The mushroom can grow singly or in clusters. Its habitat consists of areas dominated by oak, pine, spruce, and fir trees. Not limited to these locations, the King Bolete is also found in hardwood forests containing oaks. It fruits from summer to autumn.

The cap of this mushroom is convex, and 5–30 cm in diameter. At first, the cap is white then develops to mostly reddish-brown fading to white in areas near the margin; the colour continues to darken as it matures to a brown, smooth, moist, shining cap. The flesh is chalky white, often tinged with pink. Beneath is a spongy mass of vertical tubes, white at first, becoming yellowish-green, and eventually brown, in which the brown spores are produced. These pores do not stain when bruised. The stalk is stout, pale brown, with a fine network of raised, white veins towards the top and is 8–25 cm in height, and up to 7 cm thick, which is rather large in comparison to the cap. Fully mature specimens can weigh about 1 kg. However, the most appreciated by gourmets are the young small porcini, which are dense and tan to pale brown in colour, as the large ones often harbour insect larvae, and they become slimy, soft and less tasty with age. When you cut them lengthways - the insides remain white. The underside of the cap is always sponge-like on a cep.

Chefs consider porcini to be one of the finest-tasting wild mushrooms. For centuries Ancient Greeks and Romans thought them to be the best of all edible mushrooms and even today many famous chefs continue to believe this to be true. Porcini mushrooms lack aroma, but are well valued for their meaty texture, interesting flavour and distinguishing shape. The flavour is nutty, meaty, buttery, savoury, almost sweet, with a smooth, creamy texture. When fresh, porcini can be eaten and enjoyed raw as well as fried, sautéed with butter, ground into pasta, in risotto, in soups, and served with veal and game. They are a feature of many cuisines, including Provençal and Viennese. They can also be dried by stringing them separately on twine and hanging close to the ceiling of a kitchen for later use in casseroles and soups. Drying the porcini seems to accentuate its sweet and meaty overtones, reducing "l'eau du terre" (smell of the earth) that distinguishes fresh boletes. Once dry, they are best kept in an airtight container. Drying them in the oven is not advised as it can result in them being cooked and spoiling. When reconstituted, the liquid retrieved from soaking them makes a perfect soup base, needing almost no additions.

From wildmushroomsonline

Chanterelles

The golden chanterelle is one of the most recognized edible mushrooms, famous for its delicious and exquisite taste.

The golden chanterelle (C. cibarius) is common in woods in summer and autumn. Cantharellus is a mycorrhizal edible fungus, and forms symbiotic associations with hardwoods and conifer trees, where they tend to grow in the same spot year after year. The funnel-shaped cap is orange or yellow, but generally egg-yellow, with paler flesh and is quite meaty. It has forking gills on the underside, running all the way down its stalk, which tapers down seamlessly from the cap. The gills are interconnected and forked near the edge of the cap. Unlike most mushrooms with thin straight gills under the cap, the chanterelle has rounded, shallow and widely spaced ridges. The pale pinkish-buff spores are produced in narrow folds. It has a faint fragrant fruity smell reminiscent of apricots or peaches, and a mildly peppery taste, and is considered an excellent food mushroom. Its taste varies widely – from delicate to fairly intense.

Chefs love the chanterelle because of its cooking versatility. Chanterelles can be added as an ingredient to most dishes, and in general go well with eggs, curry, chicken, pork, fish, beef and veal, can be used as toppings on pizzas, be stewed, marinated, sautéed in olive oil, or used as filling for stuffed crêpes. Select specimens that have a fragrant odour, apricot colour, with no slimy, dark or decaying parts, and gills that are widely spaced. Chanterelles require cleaning before cooking because dirt tends to be found in the forked gills and crevices. It is best to use a soft toothbrush or nylon mushroom brush for cleaning. It may help to do so under slowly running water, but don’t soak them and be sure to drain well as the water will take away flavour. Once cleaned keep them in waxed paper or a paper bag in the refrigerator until cooking time. They can last 7-10 days in the refrigerator, although chanterelles are best eaten fresh

Chanterelles are rather firm-fleshed and meaty and therefore need cooking for longer than most mushrooms. The peppery taste combined with the meaty and chewy texture is ideal for cooking. Be sure to cook in large chunks to maximize flavour.

Don't pick... The False chanterelle (Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca) has finer, more orange gills and a darker cap. Although edible, it is a culinary disappointment.

The Jack O'Lantern mushroom (Omphalotus olearius) and its sister species (Omphalotus olivascens) are very similar in appearance to chanterelles and will make you very sick, although they are not lethal. Unlike chanterelles they have true gills (not forked or divided) that are thinner, have distinct crowns, and generally do not reach up to the edge. Additionally, the Jack-O-Lantern mushroom is bioluminescent and it tends to grow in clumps on trees – NOT under trees, like the chanterelle.

From wildmushroomsonline

Related Mushroom and Mushroom Foraging Sites

Foraging on Wikipedia
Find out everything you wanted to know about foraging!

Mushrooms on Wikipedia
Wiki's detailed look at mushrooms.

Wild Mushrooms Online
A great resource for detailed information on wild mushrooms.