Mushroom Recipes - Wild and Cultivated Mushroom Recipes

fermented mushrooms on a plate — Photo by Holly A. Heyser

Mushrooms are by their very nature mysterious ingredients. Beautiful, strange, slightly scary — in some cases very scary — whole cultures avoid mushrooms out of fear. Obviously I don’t fall into that category.

I’ve yet to meet a mushroom I hated, although those slimy canned things in the mega-mart may qualify. Whether it is the majestic porcini or the simple button mushroom, I love them all.

Below you’ll find a great many mushroom recipes, ranging from those you can make with any supermarket mushroom, to more exotic wild mushrooms. The recipes also range from super easy, like Provencal button mushrooms, to esoteric, like a warm salad of morel mushrooms, fiddleheads and ramps. Enjoy!

GENERAL MUSHROOM RECIPES

Wild Mushroom Pierogi

Traditional Polish dumplings filled with wild mushrooms (or any other kind of mushroom), and served with caramelized onions, dill and sour cream.

Wild Mushroom Bisque

This is the real “cream of mushroom soup,” one you’ll be proud to serve anyone.

Italian Marinated Mushrooms

This is by far the best way to preserve meaty mushrooms like porcini, chanterelles, or horse mushrooms. It also works with cremini mushrooms from the store.

Polish Fermented Mushrooms

An old Polish method of preserving mushrooms (usually saffron milk caps), that makes a great, salty accompaniment to beer, bread… or vodka.

Mushroom Pesto Dolmas

Sauteed, chopped mushrooms mixed with pesto and stuffed in a grape leaf. An awesome appetizer.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Wild Mushrooms

Wild mushrooms tossed with homemade squash gnocchi.

Wild Mushroom Ragu

A rich, Italian-style mushroom ragu, served with cavatelli pasta.

PORCINI RECIPES

General Tips on Cooking Porcini Mushrooms

Spring Porcini Salad

What you need to know about cooking with springtime porcini, which are a little different from the fall varieties. My favorite? A sort of grilled porcini salad.

Grilled Porcini

Pretty porcini sliced thickly, grilled over a hot fire and served with green onions, lemon zest and preserved garlic.

Porcini Risotto

A kicked up risotto made with both fresh and dried porcini and topped with seared squab or duck.

Mushroom Ravioli

Another “porcini double,” as there is porcini powder in the pasta and fresh porcini in the filling.

CHANTERELLE RECIPES

Chanterelles with Pumpkin Spaetzle

A gorgeous autumn dish with fresh chanterelles, homemade spaetzle, pine nuts and garlic.

Chanterelle Risotto

What to do with chanterelles in summer? Mix them with corn, which is a classic pairing in this Italian rice.

Escoffier's Cream of Chanterelle Soup

Quite possibly the sexiest soup ever made.

Pickled Chanterelle Mushrooms

Chanterelles are not very good dried, but they are excellent pickled!

Chanterelle Stuffing

A holiday classic for us, this is how we make our Thanksgiving dressing.

Jaegerschnitzel with Chanterelles

Called pfifferling in German, chanterelles are the best mushroom for making jaegerschnitzel.

Cooking Chanterelle Mushrooms

A primer on working with chanterelle mushrooms in various ways.

Indentifying and Cooking with Yellowfoot Chanterelles

Learn about this lesser-known chanterelle and you’ll covet them as much as regular ones.

MOREL MUSHROOMS

Fried Morel Mushrooms

The classic. This is the way most Midwesterners eat their morels, and they’re not wrong. The flour coating really helps seal in the true flavor of the morels.

How to Forage For Morels in the West

Tips on how to find, harvest, and store morel mushrooms from burn sites in the West.

Mushroom Tortellini

Little packets of love, filled with a mix of morels (or any other mushroom) and ricotta cheese, served with more mushrooms, peas and green onions.

Gifts of the Pine

Morel mushrooms with homemade pasta, pine nuts and spruce tips. It’s as good as it looks!

Morel Mushroom Risotto

I made this dish every spring. Morels, like most mushrooms, are perfect for an Italian risotto.

Salad of Morels, Fiddleheads and Ramps

There is a reason these ingredients are so good together. They just work.

Ramp Pasta with Morels

Green pasta made with pureed ramps served with fresh morels. It’s spring on a plate!

Morel Ragout with Trout

Morels, wild onions and bracken fiddleheads served with simply seared trout or salmon.

Morel Sauce with Venison Medallions

A richer, darker morel sauce to go with venison backstrap.

Venison-Morel Burgers

Again, the pairing of morels with venison, this time I use dried morel powder in the burger mix and then saute morels for on top of the burger. It’s pretty awesome.

BLACK TRUMPET MUSHROOMS

Midnight Rice

Black rice “risotto” with black trumpet mushrooms. Eerily good.

Wild Mushrooms with Parsley Sauce

A trio of winter mushrooms: Black trumpets, hedgehogs and yellowfoot mushrooms, served with a parsley sauce.

OTHER MUSHROOM RECIPES

Classic Button Mushrooms Provencale

This is right out of the bible of French haute cuisine, Escoffier’s “Le Guide Culinaire.” Wild meadow mushrooms, sauteed with garlic, olive oil, lemon and parsley.

Sparassis, the Cauliflower Mushroom

What you need to know to identify and cook this amazing edible mushroom!

Fried King Oyster Mushrooms

King trumpet mushrooms (which are store-bought, not wild) sliced and sauteed in spiced butter. They look exactly like fried potatoes.

Matsutake Gohan

One of the most classic matsutake mushroom recipes there is – it’s a deceptively simple Japanese rice dish.

Sichuan Stir Fry Puffballs

Puffballs are kinda like tofu, so why not make a classic spicy tofu dish — ma po tofu — using puffballs instead of tofu?

pheasant with mushrooms, brandy and cream

Mushrooms with Pheasant, Cream and Brandy

This recipe showcases the pretty lilac-colored blewit mushroom, but you can use regular button mushrooms, too. And you can use chicken instead of pheasant.

White Truffle Risotto

A classic dish from Alba, in Italy. Only I use wild Oregon white truffles. So decadent. So good.

FORAGING FOR EDIBLE AMANITAS

Eating Santa’s Shroom

How to safely eat Amanita muscaria by leaching out the hallucinogenic compounds. Once you do this, these mushrooms taste great!

Edible Amanitas: Vernicoccora

This is a big, edible amanita that shows up in springtime here in the West. Here’s how to identify it safely. Once you do, it is well worth eating.

Velosa, My Illicit Love

My favorite mushroom of all time. Amanita velosa is another springtime mushroom, daintier than vernicoccora and better tasting. Here’s why I love it and how to ID it.