I found a chicken Mushroom!

Here's a video of a chicken mushroom that I found while out on errands during the fall.   I harvested only half of the fungus and used some of what I harvested to inoculate other dead wood on my land, in hopes of having more chicken mushrooms in the future.




It was delicious and provided awesome flavor to many meals throughout the fall season.  I hope some of it comes back next year.

yummi!

Nice find!  Late in the season to still be finding fresh specimens; you must be in the warmer part of Maine.  

I've begun marking a GPS point when I find a mushroom and record a harvest date in a log book.  I'm building up a pretty good database of edibles just based on my typical travels, roaming the woods, hunting, etc.  Chicken of the woods, Pheasant Bank, Hen of the Woods, etc.  It's a fun hobby!

Davis Tyler wrote:Nice find!  Late in the season to still be finding fresh specimens; you must be in the warmer part of Maine.  

I've begun marking a GPS point when I find a mushroom and record a harvest date in a log book.  I'm building up a pretty good database of edibles just based on my typical travels, roaming the woods, hunting, etc.  Chicken of the woods, Pheasant Bank, Hen of the Woods, etc.  It's a fun hobby!

I found this during the late summer but hadn't gotten to uploading the video recently.  I've been eating it in all sorts of meals over the last few months.   All of the material that wasn't of culinary use was used to innoculate other dead wood all over my property.  With any luck I'll have my own colony in a few years.  If not... I know where I can find a few specimens.

They are such a great wild edible.  I always feel so happy after I eat them in a meal.  There's some thing about wild foods that is much more satisfying to eat than even some of the stuff that grows in my gardens.  

It's a really versatile mushoom. "chicken pot pie" is one of my favorite uses for it.  I spotted this one along the side of the road on my way to work.  Yielded almost ten pounds.  Knocked on the homeowner's door and he was pretty tickled to find out there was a "gold mine" growing on his dying sugar maple



Good luck with your inoculation project.  Are you putting mushroom tissue into dead/dying trees, or healthy ones?

There are trees at all stages of decay and a few that I know are getting close to deaths doorstep.  Not knowing exactly what would be best, I smeared my fungus bits all over a huge cluster of trees ranging from fully alive to barely able to stay up rotten.  We'll see what happens I guess.