harvesting and eating chanterelle (c. cibarius) and smooth chanterelle (c. lateritius)

Jun 12, 2014 07:10:43

We usually find these a little later in the summer....not usually at the same time we are finding red chanterelles (c. cinnabarinus) I think we have both c. cibarius and c. lateritius on different areas of our land. I am trying another spore print on the ones we found this morning. The smooth chanterelle is supposed to have a pinkish spore print the other pale yellow.
They are delicious no matter which......here are pictures of this mornings find..............

Jun 13, 2014 03:39:03

A spore print.... looks like this one at least is c. cibarius. and not a smooth chanterelle c. lateritius

Jun 13, 2014 05:36:30

Wow, you are really making me want to run outside and go for a mushroom hunt!
Thank you for sharing Judith.

Jun 21, 2014 15:49:37

wow those are very nice! here we get them about the first week of june every year depending on when the last big rain of may comes in. this year like clockwork they were out by june first! i picked a grocery bag full from my friends yard, after they had picked it over twice already, it was a real good first flush this year. have you found any black trumpets? we went for a hike and found a good bit of them up in hilly regions of the county

Jun 24, 2014 01:47:09

Dan, thank you!

Hi, John....I don't know 'black trumpet' mushrooms and couldn't find it in my books....do you have a picture or any other information to ID? We may not have them here. I'm going to see if there are more chanterelles today after more rain. We haven't had a wet June in a while, it is great.

EDIT...is 'black trumpet' the same as 'horn of plenty' craterellus cornucopioides? we did see a few of those and didn't try them...are they good?

Jun 28, 2014 10:33:10

I wish I was a more creative cook....part of this mornings pick of chanterelles sauted with onions...over rice...lambsquarters...goat cheese....same old thing

any suggestions for something different and wonderful to do with the rest of the mushrooms? Does anyone else get bored with the cooking part by the time they have grown or gathered the food??? I sometimes fantasize about providing all of these super ingredients to someone and in return they serve us with gourmet meals for two at our table.......

Jun 28, 2014 18:53:59

Wow, those chanterelles sure look good! I just spotted the first Yellow Chanterelles (Cantharellus formosus is the main West Coast species) of the year along the road down to the barn- that spot is always extra early, probably because I water it with a sprinkler attached to a hose when it's dry! But usually, in western Oregon the first chanterelles appear round the end of July or in August under Sitka Spruce along the ocean.
To answer your question, I think Black Trumpets are the same as the Horn of Plenty (Craterellus cornicopioides)- they look a lot like the Smooth Chanterelle, but they are a dark grayish-black color. They are difficult to see, but once you start seeing them, you'll usually spot a bunch more that you missed earlier. They don't appear in Oregon till December, probably much earlier in your neck of the woods. They are really delicious and taste superb when combined with eggs and cheese in omelets!
Here's one of our favorite Yellow Chanterelle recipes: saute the sliced chanterelles in butter or oil, after 10 minutes add garlic, onions, salt, tamari/soy sauce, a dash of sherry and after 5 more minutes add curry powder and then sour cream, turn it down and put a lid on the pan. After 5 minutes, serve over noodles or rice. Bon appetit! Chanterelles are also superb in cream of mushroom soup as well.

Here's the scoop on Black Trumpets from Michael Kuo, the mushroom expert:

http://www.mushroomexpert.com/craterellus_cornucopioides.html

Jun 29, 2014 04:12:31

Thank you, MK for all of the information....we did see some 'horn of plenty' and left them, there were only a few and like you say, hard to spot....next time though might gather some just to taste them....chanterelles are so much easier for my vision, we have an area of woods that doesn't have much undergrowth so we can spot patches of them from quite a distance. They have only been this prolific one other time in the past fifteen years.
Your recipe sounds great....it might just be lunch....and the creme of mushroom soup reminds me we need to check on the shiitakes...creme of shiitake soup

maybe with some chanterelles.....

Jun 29, 2014 11:29:23

I forgot to mention that Black Trumpets are one of the best mushrooms to dry for storage. The flavor is concentrated by drying. I dry my extra Black Trumpets whole in a commercial food dryer (it's too wet outside here in December for outdoor drying in the sun), then I put them in mason jars in the freezer where they can be stored for years.

Jun 30, 2014 08:26:22

another basket full this morning...this is probably kind of boring to watch...although for us finding them it is pretty exciting...we are like a couple of kids on an easter egg hunt.....this year they are just amazing in an area of trees with no poison ivy....we are careful to leave plenty and always miss some anyway that become too full blown and buggy... those are our future harvest stored out there in the woodland

Jul 02, 2014 15:44:35

The chanterelles are wide open here in Alabama.
Ive easily gathered 35lbs of these fantastic fungi over the past week. Hopefully will gather enough this year to make it until next years harvest.

Jul 02, 2014 15:52:32

Jay Grace wrote:The chanterelles are wide open here in Alabama.
Ive easily gathered 35lbs of these fantastic fungi over the past week. Hopefully will gather enough this year to make it until next years harvest.

great harvest! how are you preserving them? I dry shiitakes and morels...haven't tried drying any of these yet...although I froze a few sauted ones in our tiny refrigerator freezer to spread them out a bit.

Jul 02, 2014 16:32:32

I'm pretty lazy and just boil them in a huge pot with butter, then freeze them in gallon bags. That way I don't have to worry about rehydrating them or cooking them to much.
Just heat and serve.
I have had some dehydrated ones and it does bring out the flavor more.

Bad thing about being in the south with chanterelles is there are little grubs in every last mushroom. On the good side it's chanterelle fed, extra protein

Jul 02, 2014 17:39:39

Try them pickled, like these:

http://foodpreservation.about.com/od/Pickles/r/Mushroom-Recipe-Pickled-Chanterelles.htm
http://chezpim.com/cook/pickled-chanterelles

Sep 01, 2014 14:11:20

Any tips for drying them?

I'm hoping that I'll find more this year than ever before and I want to send some to friends in Germany.

I'm finding it a bit strange that your able to collect so many in Alabama but I'm struggling in mushroom country to find more than 4 at a time!

ops:

Sep 01, 2014 15:56:37

I'm not able to post pics on here (I'm on a mobile phone)
If any one wants to post the pics for me I'd appreciate it. I email you a few of the pictures.

Sep 01, 2014 20:27:00

If you store the pics online anywhere it's easy to use the "Img" button so link to it that way.

Sep 01, 2014 20:31:11

Judith Browning wrote:Does anyone else get bored with the cooking part by the time they have grown or gathered the food???

My husband is like that. He'll find some Oyster mushrooms and put them in a plastic grocery bag and throw them on the counter and maybe tell me about them before they go bad. Or, maybe not!

I have a hard time actually harvesting sometimes. Particularly if it looks nice in the ground and harvesting ruins the symmetry.

Sep 02, 2014 17:15:14

Well i broke down and just bummed a computer and these are some of the pics. The top pic on the blue rag is the last few from the end of the season before everything burnt up in the heat.
The second pic is 35lbs of chanterelles that i gathered from the woods behind the house. (and yes its 35lbs i step on the scales with and without the bags)
About 2hrs gathering, then, another few hours processing and getting a decent amount of the grubs out of the stems. Making a halfassed effort to remove the grubs is what makes it bothersome to me. If it were me just eating the shrooms I'd leave them in. They dissappear when you cook the mushrooms anyway. Down here in Alabama maybe one out of 50 wont have at least one grub worm in the base.
Hopefully once it cools off towards october and we get a decent amount of rain we will have a second bloom this year. But that is hit or miss.

Sep 02, 2014 19:45:57

Joshua Finch wrote:Any tips for drying them?

I rip mine into 1/8 - 1/4" thick strips and toss them in a coolish dryer and try to remember to shake them every 4-12 hours. Depending on the moisture content they can be "hard/crisp dry" in 12 -48 hours then I dry can them either in strips or after dicing. After dicing I might have small pieces or I might have just a lot of mushrooms and I run them through a clean coffee grinder for a powder when is easy to add later in a recipe if you decide it needs a punch. Rehydration of chanterelles can take longer than I want (or expect) sometimes.

Rick

Sep 02, 2014 20:12:47

A couple more links I like:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/446512

http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/chanterelle-rillettes

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/winter101.html

Sep 19, 2014 09:06:11

I keep finding mushrooms that may or may not be chanterelles. How can I tell for sure?

Sep 19, 2014 10:33:10

Those aren't chanterelles. The gills under the cap terminate at the stem, on a chanterelle the gills extend down the stem.

This is an excellent example http://www.torange.us/photo/13/13/Chanterelle-mushrooms-1353578078_40.jpg

Sep 19, 2014 11:07:05

Chanterelles don't have gills at all they have little ridges that are not parallel.

Sep 19, 2014 12:53:25

@Rick

Thank you - that's a much better photo than in my guide book. Very hard to tell without direct personal experience.

@Jay

Ah-ha - thanks. In the photos they always looked like gills even though I've seen them classified as non-gilled mushrooms.

Sep 19, 2014 14:44:14

Dave, somewhere I heard them described as 'folds' and this image helps me visualize the underside. the folds are also forked. Smooth chanterelles generally have barely visible folds or a totally smooth underside. Here there is a false chanterelle also that has sharper folds almost gill like and I think they dont' run down the stem....that one is confusing to me and when we first started collecting them I used to be so certain in the woods and then carefully go over the whole basket again at the house just to be sure....a look alike but not a deadly one:)

I think you can see the folds in both mine and Jays pictures in this thread.

Sep 20, 2014 19:46:33

Okay - let me try again! I found a few more mushrooms today in the field behind my house. These are the same color as yours, plus they have ridges, not gills. Did I get chanterelles this time?

Sep 20, 2014 20:03:18

Looks good to me, though your caps curl down more than I've seen here, ours are much more trumpet like.

Try tearing one through the middle (vertically) a couple of times and post a pic. They should shred almost like dried jerky.

Sep 20, 2014 20:10:59

Here they are.

I can't find anything toxic related to these. Now that I see the gill differences, I think they're definitely some kind of Cantharellus.

Sep 20, 2014 20:14:02

Yup, they are chanterelles, makes me want to go hunt some but it'll be a few weeks yet. Made me so hungry, I had to go open some pickled ones!

Sep 20, 2014 20:16:13

Here - more shredded.

Sep 20, 2014 20:16:51

AH! NOW I NEED TO FIND SOME BUTTER!!!

Sep 20, 2014 20:19:00

@Rick

Thank you for the help.

I'll bet your season is just after ours by a few weeks. I'm going to keep my eyes peeled now that I know what I'm looking for.

Sep 20, 2014 20:21:59

Yup sauteed in butter over scrambled eggs is one of my favorite ways of preparing them, might have to rehydrate some for breakfast tomorrow.

Sep 20, 2014 20:32:51

I only found four tiny ones... we were out of butter so I sauteed them in olive oil.

Wow... the flavor. Rich, almost slightly fruity at the top with a smoky, meaty, umami aftertaste.

If I don't post here ever again, these were misidentified.

I'll be looking for these again. Going to have to scan those woods for more.

Sep 21, 2014 07:18:52

David, did you take a spore print? That's the definitive way to ID mushrooms.

My husband is the main mushroom hunter in the family, but I know there is one to watch out for when looking for chanterelles - jack-o'-lantern mushrooms.
Omphalotus_olearius

They do glow in the dark so that's an easy tip off.

Sep 21, 2014 07:29:13

Cj Verde wrote:David, did you take a spore print? That's the definitive way to ID mushrooms.

My husband is the main mushroom hunter in the family, but I know there is one to watch out for when looking for chanterelles - jack-o'-lantern mushrooms.
Omphalotus_olearius

They do glow in the dark so that's an easy tip off.

Jack o lanterns...........for us we find chanterelles just in the late spring and summer growing single and in small groups, on bare ground...and see this look alike in the fall growning on dead logs and stumps in large clumps, different season, different ways they grow....I've never seen them side by side though to compare.
I agree with CJ...do a spore print to be sure and be certain you are in the right season for them and the right kind of habitat.

Sep 21, 2014 07:37:03

pages from my peterson guide.....for both jack 0 lantern and false chanterelle.

Sep 21, 2014 07:52:37

It took us a long time to be confident about an ID for chanterelles. or any mushroom, for that matter Just any one of the identifying factors is not enough I think.....the spore print for a jack o lantern is white to yellow and so is one of the chanterelles,I believe, but combined with habitat and season and the assurance from several mushroom guides, a local fungi person, etc....you might get a good ID...don't be in a rush......

Sep 21, 2014 17:37:45

Thank you for the scans.

It was definitely a chanterelle of some sort. Other than here, I checked multiple guides plus the Internet.

They were also delicious - and I lived. I ate four as a test.

The thing that was the dead giveaway on ID was the ridges. Once I recognized those I was set. Not easy to bruise or damage like the other gilled fungi that looked similar.

Today I went back to the empty lot behind my house where I found the first four and picked another 20 or so. It seems I have a chanterelle patch.

Bonus: I also discovered three big edible Lactarius indigo mushrooms back there. That's one that's impossible to screw up the ID on (unless you're colorblind!).

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