meeyauw's Photo A Day: Wild Edibles: Chantarelle Mushrooms

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Wild Edibles: Chantarelle Mushrooms

Above, you see how the chantarelles usually appeared in the forest when we hiked Butterfield Pond — they were in large colorful groups. But occasionally we would find a lone chantarelle. These are distinctive mushrooms and very edible. In fact, John harvested many of them and cooked and ate them when we got home that night of the hike. Below you see his harvested mushrooms before he carefully put them in the tied-up sleeve of his spare long-sleeved shirt.

Sauteed Chantarelles
This is the way John cooks his chantarelles.

Clean the mushrooms and slice them. Sautee them in a lot of butter until they are soft. Then sprinkle Parmesan cheese on top to your taste and eat!

They tasted a lot like those little mushrooms in Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup (the extent of my mushroom knowledge), but were very buttery. They were mild tasting but I am not used to the texture of them. I predict that I will come to like them a lot. I found another, similar, recipe to John's. You can find it on my recipe blog here.

Above you can see the very distinctive rays of gills on the underside of the chantarelle. They remind me of the veins in rhubarb leaves. Below is one more photograph of two chantarelles that we came across.