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Comment by changoplatanero | Hacker News Reader

Mushroom foraging sounds really fun but I’m too scared to eat anything that I find.

There's no wiggle room. You need to be 1000% certain of identification, if you decide to eat a mushroom.

That's how I've been doing it for the last decade. I forage a lot of mushrooms, but don't consume anything I'm not sure of.

Also, there are "beginner" mushrooms, that don't have any dangerous look-alikes, such as the famous "chicken of the woods" (laetiporus sulphureus). You can't really go wrong with mushroom like these.

My farmers' market has a mushroom guy that brings in things that I've never seen before.

Some of them get expensive and a few I've found rather unpleasant.

There is absolutely no way that I could find these things myself, so I would suggest a dealer like this if you are in an area large enough to support one.

This is the dealer at my market:

https://www.wildgrowthgourmetmushrooms.com/

I just wish I could find a morel, chanterelle, and porcini dealer.

What happens when you put in your zip code and search here?

https://shop.marketwagon.com/collections/vendor/3711?redir=t...

"Sorry, we do not currently support your location."

I hope you find something near you.

> chanterelle

How do you cook them? They are pretty cheap here so I tried number of times this summer and found the flavour just not worth the cleanup hassle. Maybe they are different in NA. IIRC the traditional method here is to boil them and then cook with bacon and onion, so chances of their flavour is 0.

Fry them in butter and put them on a piece of toast.

Tried exactly that, def there’s nice mild flavour, but personally not worth the hassle.

Yeah, I've got foraging with a friend that knew what she was doing, and she really only did it for a fun excuse for a hike and bought her mushrooms at the farmer's market. Granted, I'm in Portland, so mushrooms are exceptional up here, but there's just no way you'll find the quality and quantity the pros do.

You should try lion's mane if you haven't already. It's pretty good. My favorite typically remains pink oyster mushroom.

I've grown mushrooms (from known spores) before and it's interesting. The problem with it is that most mushrooms only grow on very specific materials, eg. only on oak wood or straw.

Ha ha, more like "pancakes of the woods" [1]. I'll have to keep my eye out for them.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=laetiporus+sulphureus&client...

"There are old mushroom hunters, there are bold mushroom hunters, but there are no old bold mushroom hunters."

Many people just stick to the very easily identified mushrooms with few or no real look-a-likes or atleast mushrooms who's poisonous look-a-likes aren't that deadly but just make you feel shitty.

Morels are super popular around me because they are very easy to identify and false morels aren't very hard to differentiate once you have seen true morels a couple times. They may look similar to someone who has never seen or picked morels before, but they have very distinct differences once you know what to look for.

At the very least someone should learn what the extremely deadly mushrooms, like death caps or destroying angels, look like so they know what to most definitely avoid. Especially with the delayed reactions which might prevent them from connecting their illness with the mushrooms they ate a day or two before.

A good field guide will specifically call out similar but deadly mushrooms when referencing edible mushrooms and are very clear on the dangers of misidentification and the minimum neccessary identification required. Some mushrooms require a microscrope, but many others just require you to identify certain distinguishing features.

In Switzerland 'community halls' near forests usually have mushroom checking days where you can bring them in for free. Not sure how this works in other countries

And aren't you terrified of eating food from a supermarket full of chemicals?

Depending where you are, that worry might be greater with foraged berries, mushrooms etc. I live in an area that's been heavily industrialised for over 150 years. The soil at my mom's place when tested had too much lead and PCBs for safety. And not too long ago they found leaking barrels of nuclear waste from the 1940s in a lovely wooded area just a couple blocks over from my old primary school. Only God knows what's in the soil here, unless you test it.

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