Category Archives: Mushrooms

Which Mushrooms Freeze Best?

So today I took an inventory of our freezer to see which types of mushrooms survived deep freeze better than others. I was quite disappointed to see that the only species that really “made it” throughout the winter was Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus sp.). In fact, 90% showed no signs of degradation at all, however I did note a trend that the fresher it was frozen the better it held up. This is very promising as Chickens don’t dehydrate well *at all* (they become papery and gritty when they’re rehydrated, no matter for how long). Chicken “ends,” i.e. the bits that are corky to begin with and are destined for making into broth, work well when they’re dehydrated and then boiled in water to make soup, however they need to be scooped out after they’ve imparted their flavor to the broth as they are simply inedible.

All of our Oysters (Pleurotus sp.), Honey Mushrooms (Armillaria sp., including E./A. abortivum), Meadow Mushrooms (Agaricus campestris), and Puffballs (Calvatia sp., Vacellum sp. etc) didn’t make it through the winter months without serious freezer burn or going stale, no matter how well-packed they were.

All of our Hen of the Woods (Maitake / Grifola frondosa) that was in the freezer didn’t do so well either, but the dried Hens are still great, sealed in airtight mason jars.

This upcoming year I’ll be experimenting with more dehydration.

Peace,
-Steve

#09 Aborted Entoloma

Harkening back to 2010/10/16#08 where I *thought* I had found an Aborted Entoloma, I was correct!

Today, we found a huge mass of them, and they grow in heavy numbers wherever Entoloma and Armillaria (Honey Mushrooms) grow together.

In essence, they are what you get when those two mushrooms “graft into eachother” much like how apples are grafted onto orange tree roots to increase the size of the fruit and make it sweeter. Only this happens naturally, and the Armillaria causes the Entoloma not to open up, and become all lumpy.

The sad part, however, is that being so distracted in collecting them, I forgot to grab some samples of the Entoloma “parents” for identification (as some Entolomas can give you an upset stomach). I only took pictures. 😛 So now we’re going to have to throw out the lot or run back out to the patch tomorrow and scrounge up the “parent” samples again.

UPDATE (Oct 30 2010): Apparently, according to Tom Volk (a very well-published mycology expert at the University of Wisconsin, and a bit of a mushroom celebrity) Entoloma abortivum is a bit of a misnomer. It seems that the species is actually Armillaria that have been deformed some way by the Entoloma, rather than the other way around as was quickly snapped up into the literature. As such, all so-called “Aborted Entoloma” (since they’re more “Aborted Armillaria”) should be edible, provided you cook them long enough. As such I’ve also updated my tagging a bit.