One day I walked into the kitchen at my friend Elise’s house. We were going to work on some recipes for her website, Simply Recipes, and Elise began telling me about her weekend. I listened intently, until, behind her, out in her back yard, I caught a glimpse of something: Mushrooms! Lots of mushrooms!
I found myself struggling to keep my attention with Elise. My eyes kept focusing on these beguiling mushrooms. I could almost feel them calling me: “Come hither, Hank, we’re yummy mushrooms… Eat us, eat us!” That’s what it sounded like in my warped little brain. OK, maybe not exactly like that, but close enough.
“I’m sorry, Elise. But I’ve just noticed those mushrooms behind you…”
Elise shrieked in delight. “They’re here!” Elise is as crazy about wild mushrooms as I am. She’d seen these mushrooms flush the previous year and her brother, also a mushroom hunter, had pronounced them fried chicken mushrooms, lyophyllum decastes. Edible. She let me pick as many as I wanted.
“Fried chicken mushrooms, eh? You sure?” Elise hemmed. She didn’t eat them last year because she was most definitely not sure. Both of us are wise enough to not take the eating of an unknown mushroom lightly. As the saying goes, there are bold mushroom hunters, and there are old mushroom hunters — there are no old, bold mushroom hunters.
Still, these shrooms were calling me. This happens from time to time, as, I think, it does to many mushroom hunters. I often feel when I am out looking for mushrooms that the Force guides me to the good ones.
But that does not mean I simply popped a few into my mouth and began chewing. I wanted to be damn sure about what variety of mushroom this was before I’d go eating it. So I began keying them out, thinking they were fried chicken mushrooms.
To “key out” a mushroom is to use a book like David Arora’s Mushrooms Demystified
, which contains long “keys” consisting of scores of “if-then” statements. For example, if the mushroom has a ring on the stalk, go to No. 12. If not, go to No. 18, and so on. You start with guidebook pictures to get you in the ballpark, then move on to the more detailed key to confirm your guess.
This is absolutely necessary when you are trying to see if a mushroom that is new to you will taste good, be boring — or will dissolve your liver.
Here’s how I keyed out these shrooms. First, they were beige-tan, growing in a clump on a rotted stump. They had a dark patch in the center of the cap. Fried chicken mushrooms have this trait.
Then I cut a bunch and set them in a sheet pan.
Huh. These mushrooms all had a ring on the stalk. Fried chicken mushrooms don’t. In most other respects, these mushrooms look like lyophyllum decastes, but this ring disqualifies them. That’s a problem. Now I needed to figure out what in fact they were.
A little more reading led me to the honey mushroom, armillaria mellea. Similar in a lot of respects to the fried chicken mushroom, and also edible. At this point I began feeling that mycological siren song that traps many a mushroom hunter: I wanted these to be honey mushrooms, so I could eat them.
It is a common — and potentially lethal — mistake to make a square peg fit into a round hole, mentally downplaying one aspect of a mushroom so it can fit into the edible hole you want it to be in. Dangerous.
So I took a closer look at these mushrooms.
What makes a honey mushroom a honey mushroom? Lots of things, but there are two important markers to look for beyond the three easy ones: where it’s growing, is it in a cluster and does it have the ring? The first important marker is whether the cap has five o’clock shadow:
These little hairs, or speckly fuzzy things on the cap are a hallmark of a honey mushroom — which, incidentally, is so named for the range of colors it can have on the cap rather than its flavor. Look for these markings.
A second tell-tale marker is the mushroom’s gills: They are decurrent, meaning they run down the bottom of the cap and onto the top of the stalk, down to the mushroom’s faint ring.
A final test is a spore print. It’s like a fingerprint for a mushroom, and will often confirm your best guesses after keying the thing out. To make a spore print, you slice off the stem of a mushroom and lay the cap, gills down, on paper. Ideally, you do a couple of prints: One on white paper, another on a darker paper. This is because a lot of mushrooms have white spores, which won’t show up on a piece of white paper.
Honey mushrooms have white spores. I was 95 percent certain I had honey mushrooms before the spore print, but still, I let a cap sit on a piece of yellow legal paper for several hours. I lifted the cap and booyah! A white print of the gills was on the yellow paper. Score.
Almost. You see, mushrooms are largely unknown in their interactions with the human body. Some, like the turkey tail, Trametes versicolor, have known medicinal properties. Others give you hallucinations. Many we perceive as just tasty. But some of those tasty ones affect different people differently.
For example, Elise cannot eat candy caps, Lactarius fragilis; she gets nauseous. Yet most people can eat bushels — once dried, candy caps smell and taste like maple syrup. So before I horked down a huge plate of these honey mushrooms (or gave them to Holly), I sauteed a couple and ate them. I reckoned that if I had no ill effects the next day, I’d make something with the rest of them.
I awoke the next morning to no gastric distress. Finally! After all this careful testing I knew I had several pounds of bona fide Armillaria mellea. What to do with them?
Apparently honey mushrooms are not well thought of in the mushroom world. Mediocre was the universal report. Slimy, remarked another. Then I read that the Russians, Poles and Ukrainians loved these things, and that there is a traditional pierogi made in Ukraine with honey mushrooms. There was my dish!
Cooked honey mushrooms have a special characteristic. Most sources say to cook them for at least 15 minutes, which seemed like no problem for a pierogi filling. So I dry sauteed them in a pan until they began releasing their water, then added butter, chopped onions and a little stock. Then a funny thing happened: Everything in the pan became thick and soupy.
Apparently, honey mushrooms act as a kind of mycological okra. The “slime” that comes out of them when cooking would indeed be nasty if you tried to eat them like shiitake mushrooms, which they look like, superficially. But this thickening effect is perfect when the mushrooms are part of a filling. Spasibo, Russians!
I served my mushroom pierogi simply, with onions sauteed in butter, sour cream and a little dill. They were chewy, hearty and filling, as you might expect with so much dough and butter. The honey mushrooms were not terribly distinctive, but tasted fine and, as part of a filling, were not slimy at all.
In case you are wondering, yes, all this work was worth the effort. Too many foragers shy away from mushrooms because they are scary. And those who do typically stick with the traditionals — morels, porcini, chanterelles. But scores of edible mushrooms live among us, and, if you are careful about identifying them, they can enrich your cooking in ways few other ingredients can. Many, like the honey mushroom, have special traits that you can take advantage of — if you know how to tap into them.
Who would have known that ground, dried honey mushrooms would act exactly like okra or filé powder? But now I do, and you do, too.
The gills on honeys do NOT always run down the stems, though they are attached. On some you can see lines that extend maybe a quarter of an inch down the stalk, as if they are trying to be gills but didn’t quite make it. But on others, the gills stop at the stem. I’ve found this discrepancy within the same batch of honeys. That’s the problem with IDing – mushrooms are such individualists! They break their own rules all the time.
All my 75 years I can only remember Mom and myself now boiling them 2 times or tell no more foam or scum is on the water. change it once at least then cook them up in butter and onions or how you like any mushroom. tasty and a bit good chewy
Honey mushrooms–love them! The harvest has been very good this year and we’ve just put in our winter stores of them. In my neck of the woods in Northwestern central Canada the ethnic name (Polish? Ukranian?) seems to be pidpenky. Also known simply as stump mushrooms. Definitely a mushroom you need to identify well. Once you know it, though, you see them everywhere when in season.
Sounds delicious: Perogies meet pidpenkies.
Love the pictures and descriptions of the Honey Mushrooms. Very informative and exactly what I was searching for.
These pierogas look delicious. They look like goyza dumplings. Maybe I could put the armillaria mushrooms in dumpling wrappers?
Ukrainians love these delightful“pidpen’ky” (literally “from under stumps”)! Thank you for your article. Come to my house, I’ll. show you how I do them! Our Christmas Eve dinner of twelve meatless dishes would be missing one of the favourite ingredients without pidpen’ky! Diakuju!!!
Diakuju Ukrainians for “pidpen’ky” (under the stumps) ! FYI Ukrainians have loved and eaten these lovely morsels since time began…
Mushrooms always catch my eye, too, but remind me how much braver our ancestors were in taking the risk to eat them.
Your writing is beautiful, Hank, and your pierogi dough is so thin and delicate.
Great article. Well said in all regards.
Hank, question for you- when you talk about keying out a mushroom,you mention Arora’s book. Can I get the full title and author of that book from you? Or is there another that you’d suggest that also uses the if, then statements? I’m looking for a good reference guide for this.
Lesl: You bet. Mushrooms Demystified, by David Arora.
Hank – I just identified that several hundred of these
“popped” in my yard. So am really excited about making some fresh pierogi with them. I was wondering if you ever tried drying them and if so did you get the same “okra” effect with the rehydrated ones?
A friend of mine said they were delicious cooked. But when he ate them raw the next day he became very sick to his stomach, both with diarrhea and vomiting. So could it be they are ok cooked, but not raw?
Jean: 99% of all mushrooms MUST be eaten cooked. I don’t know why someone would eat raw mushrooms, honestly. And you’ll note in this article it says to cook them thoroughly.
Does the ring form a yellowish edge
dbeeman, honey mushrooms with a ring are fine. In fact, it’s a distinguishing charateristic I look for.
Ive read about these honey mushrooms on multiple sites. Most say that honey mushrooms with a ring on the stem are deadly poisonous. The ringless honey mushroom is suppose to be edible though. Any info?
FYI, as a general rule, to avoid stomach problems (for some people) honey mushrooms (armillarias) should be boiled first, the water thrown out, and then prepared whichever you wish….
(of course not if you are going to dry them)
I noticed about thirty clusters of these beautiful honey mushrooms right outside my backdoor a few days ago. I of course went through and painstakingly identified them and went to harvesting them. I took about 10-15 large caps, cleaned and cut them up with some wild onions. Seasoned with peper and garlic and sauteed them in olive oil. Then I added them to a stew I had going of chicken, celery and cream of mushroom soup. OMG! Served over Jasmine rice! Exquisite! Very good comfort food! Definitely my new fave mushrooms!
Found the motherload of Honey Mushrooms on Saturday. Split into two prep streams; first, I’m drying bags of them (mushroom powder?) and second, making Mushroom Catsup (turns out to be much more viscous than the type I’ve made with Champignon — as you’ve noted.)
Here’s a GREAT soup you can make with Honey mushrooms.
Creamy Hungarian Mushroom Soup
1/2 stick of Butter
1 lb fresh honey mushrooms, finely sliced/chopped
1 medium onion, diced finely, or about 2 cups diced
2 cups Chicken stock
1 T Paprika
1 T Soy Sauce
2 tsp Dill Weed or a fresh dill head
1 cup of Milk
3 T Flour
2 tsp Lemon Juice
1/2 cup Sour Cream
Salt and Pepper to taste
Melt butter in a stock pot on medium/high heat. Saute’ onions until they turn clear, about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, stir and saute’ for about 5 minutes. Add chicken stock, soy sauce, dill, paprika. Reduce heat, Simmer covered for 15 minutes. Now either use an immersion blender and puree in the stock pot, or remove in stages to a blender and puree, return to the pot. Whisk flour into milk and add, along with sour cream, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Stir well, Simmer on low for another 5 minutes or so and serve. Mmmmmmmmm!
And by the way there were 5-6 of us eating them each time. No adverse affects by the other people.
Be careful with these. Some people get very sick eating them. I have eaten them many many times and love them. However my brother on one occasion and a friends wife on another got very sick on them. Extreme diarrea, nausea, etc. it did pass but they were very ill. I’ll pick them again when the first frost sets in.
I first tried Armillaria mellea 35 years ago and didn’t care for them…thought they had a metallic taste. I mostly ignored them after that. About a decade ago, while out photographing mushrooms with a Polish friend, he suggested par-boiling the honeys first. I have found that just a couple of minute blanch removed the metallic taste that I have found so unpleasant. After that I like them in stir fries, where I find they have a mild shiitake like taste.
Also, take the stipes, just the stipes, and remove the outer ‘skin’. Take the resulting core and fry them in a VERY hot, dry (no oil), caste iron pan with a little salt…absolutely delicious.
I no longer pass by the large clusters of Armillaria.
Thanks for the great post! The link to the recipe appears to have disappeared. Can you repost it? I’m finding bushels of honey mushrooms this week!
Sydney: I deleted that old recipe. Here is the improved one: https://honest-food.net/2014/04/21/mushroom-pierogi-recipe/
There is a huge colony of honey mushrooms in Oregon! 🙂
http://www.extremescience.com/biggest-living-thing.htm
The link to the recipe is gone.Can you repost it? I must have some honey mushroom pierogi!!
I love mushrooms. I wish we had a greater variety available in grocery stores. I also agree that it’s very important to make sure you don’t eat any poisonous ones. I love my liver more! LOL!
John V. Karavitis
I live in Northern California near the Trinity river. This year and last I’ve had a nice little bloom of honey mushrooms in my yard (fruiting where there used to be a black oak tree). I recently picked some button-sized ones and sauteed them in olive oil with onion, salt, pepper. They were delicious! I plan to make use of as many as emerge. I put a little fence around the area, and today I watered the area lightly to encourage fruiting.
I have seen them in the local woods here-and-there but have never eaten them until now.
For a time I thought them not worth the picking
and wondered why my Polish friends canned them
by the bushel. What did they know that I didn’t?
Then on a whim I tossed a hand full in a soup I was making.
Umami! They are loaded with umami.
The flavor of the Honey mushroom is a bit faint and
in truth verges on insipid but it packs a big
punch in the umami department.
best explanation for determining honey mushroom i have found yet, thank you!
Great article! I’m just getting into shrooming and found a ton of the honeys today. Thanks for taking the time to write this!
Just came across them in the Czech Republic, where they are called Václavka obecná. Good to know the slime released when cooking is normal. They were perfect in a turkey stuffing recipe!
The Cherokees call them “slicks”.
Foraging is a skill I lack and wish I had access to a trusted personto learn from. Mushrooms are a favorite foodtuff and I would love to be able to just go out and find such delicacies growing wild.
Your pierogie sound fabuous btw
I’ve found honeys many times but have not tried them yet … I’ve always been skeptical of them for some reason.
BTW, I can’t eat hedgehogs for some reason … they make me nauseous.
I also live in Sacramento, but am an Eastern European transplant. Some of my happiest childhood memories are picking mushrooms with my parents, including oyster mushrooms, puffballs, and some bright orange lactaria. I’d love to get back into mushroom picking. Do you know of any expert foragers who are willing to give lessons? My husband and I just came from a walk along American River, where we found a ton of large, russet collored gilled mushrooms. They look a lot like lactaria deliciosa, but are not “milky” nor get discolored when damaged. I’d love to find out what they are. While we were there, we picked some wonderful miner’s lettuce and chickweed as well.
Hi, its bice to see people to appreciate the wild mushrooms, i terribly miss the time i lived in my country, Finland, where it was breeze pick mushrooms. Here where i live its not so easy if you dont know the landowner. Meaning its illegal to pick with out permission.
But i must say, im little suprised your saying ;”but they looked so much like the inedible russulas and lactarias”. Cos those are my favorite mushrooms, wich i have eaten my whole life, lactarias are incredibly tasty when handled properly and made for russian/carelian style of salad. You Do have to know wich ones to pick from those, not all tastes good or are edible. And russulas are all so good but nothing spectacular, but when you mix it with others they add nice touch of taste.
But if you want to know more, contact me on email. I dont want to go on for ever with my comment, i just than you for very nice blog wich i follow with intrest when i have time 🙂
Hank – followup on my earlier post – we simply can the mushroos in 1 quart sealers – and yes they are slimy after that process. Re the walleye fishing- dead serious about the invite – just get here and we’ll take care of the rest – they’ve been catching now – but you can get some pretty serious action in March. We have some other tasty water creatures here too!- specifically Goldeye and Tulibee – catch, smoke, enjoy – might even be able to line up a day with a commercial fisherman who places his nets under the ice….pretty neat adventure.
I found and collected both the Honey and the Fried Chicken this fall. I’d not been a big fan of either, thinking that they were both a little too bland to bother with.
But I decided that the problem might be with me rather than the mushrooms.
And so I decided to treat them as a source of umami in oriental styled soups.
Works!
Hank, I made these on Thursday from the dried ones and they did act as a thickening agent. I’m wondering if it’s because it’s fat soluble rather than water soluble because it thickens after adding the butter, but not when adding water. Turns out, however, that honey mushrooms and my stomach don’t get along. My husband is fine with them though. They were delicious though and I want to try this recipe with a different species.
Nice blewit pun.
I found a ton of honey mushrooms last summer, and traded them for a big chicken of the woods. It was pretty hot, though, so not much else fruited; my black trumpet spot was sadly deficient.
Jessa: Just say no to snobbery – we see it with duck hunters, too. “Oh, this duck is no good.” Depends on what you do with it…
Brent: Very cool! I may just come back to Manitoba for those walleye – I hear it is a spectacular fishery. On the honey mushrooms, are they still slimy after pickling? Do you cook them before pickling?
JR Young: Sadly, I have not yet found a really good chanterelle spot. Wah. Still searching…
Cork: Thanks! I was hoping to put enough info in here to help others actually key out the mushroom. Too many people say, “well, don’t take my word for it, check a guidebook.” Good enough advice, but if you don’t even know where to begin with a guidebook, you can get lost in a hurry.
bpaul: Still have not yet found a patch of fried chicken mushrooms yet…
Ken: I’ll take you out in February, if you want!
Carol: I hear that! I am always the guinea pig when I bring a new mushroom home. Test, eat a little, wait. THEN serve to the girlfriend….
Rachel: Interesting. No thickening? Wonder if the drying process removes that from the mushroom? I have some dried now, and will test them out.
Ansel: Yeah, honeys are a weird lot, biologically. There are reports that they have slightly different textures and flavors depending on host, although most say they are a little slimy when cooked fresh – I know mine were!
Doris: Go for it! Buy a good guidebook like David Arora’s and try to add a new mushroom to your knowledge every trip, whether it’s edible or not.
I’m cautious about my mushrooms. But I swear I’ve seen those before, and they do look edible. Good on you for doing the leg work and eating them. Also, wonderful post for the clear pictures of the gills etc. really helpful. Too snowy in MN right now for any mushrooms, next year.
Wonderful post! Thanks for all the details on spotting a safe mushroom. Very helpful.
Happy New Year!!
You are my hero, Hank. I come from morel country but have yet to venture out into East Coast mushrooming, in part because morels are the only ones I know. Maybe this year will be the spring I start to explore the Pennsylvania hinterlands….
Honey Mushrooms are actually a species complex and different specimens can vary quite a bit. I have collected them on the east coast and interestingly, did not find them slimy at all. Maybe a different part of the species complex? The ones that I found had a deep umami flavor which was quite distinctive. Maybe the host species affects the flavor?
As I mentioned, we dried ours. Last night I reconstituted them in a skillet with some water and added them to a turkey vegetable soup. They didn’t thicken anything up, including the water I used to reconstitute them. I’ll have to tweak your recipe for these dried ones.
Excellent post as usual, Hank! I should show it to my husband. He’s very cautious about the mushrooms I bring home from a foray and resists any that “look dangerous”–i.e., with gills and a central stalk. Oyster mushrooms? Fine. Chanterelles? Yippee! Honey mushrooms? Nope, no way. I found a cluster of armillaria mellea last year–a real find, as there aren’t that many edible mushroom species in L.A.–and DH wouldn’t hear of eating them. I sat him down with Arora’s book and painstakingly went through the keying process with him. Hey, I even got the correct ID! And what did my beloved say? “If it’s that much trouble to identify them, I don’t want us to take the risk!” and he made me promise not to eat any. So into the compost heap they went, deep sigh. And I’d have been willing to eat some secretively, except that if I’d been one of the unfortunates with a GI sensitivity, I would never have heard the end of it! The things we do for marital harmony…
They’re quite beautiful – the shrooms and tis the season for piroshki! Now if I only knew how to forage! Ken
Also, Fried Chicken Mushrooms are one of the few wild mushrooms I’ve definitely shown a sensitivity to. A shame, because I run into them on a pretty regular basis. And, I enjoy the sound of their Latin name.
Bp
Fantastic post. Excellent keying photographs.
I like honey mushrooms, and boy howdy can they be prolific in the right circumstances. Often, up here, the right circumstances turn out to be an area that has recently been selectively logged. The forest is generally full of small trees and ground debris, and feels like it is under a bit of pressure. Often, honeys will explode over such a landscape.
Interestingly, I’ve never had the sliminess happen when I cooked them. I’ll file them under “good for drying and soups” then.
Your Northern Fan,
Bp
Great description of the ID/keying process. Those pierogis look delicious!
Nicely written and edifying, Hank: felt like I was in a worthwhile mushroom hunting field course!
We have chanterelles coming in by the bucket load right now. We were out again today looking for some king boletes but had no luck. We found many slippery jacks and a matte jack which we have not found before.
I like the winter mushrooms, but I can’t wait until spring to chase morels in the Sierra and in WA.
Hank – you always make me hungry – these mushrooms you refer to are a comfort food for those of use here in Manitoba of Ukrainian heritage. We call them ‘pidpenki’ – a fall time treasure – here in abundace after the first fall frosts – then picked, preserved (either frozen or canned) and then served at our traditional Ukrainian Christmas eve dinner – 12 meatless dishes and the pidpenki (slimy as they are) are one of the awaited for treasures – served in a cream sauce. Keep up the great writing. And – if you want to return to Manitoba for an adventure other than waterfowl hunting – let me know – and we can treat you to and incredible march ice-fishing adventure – and some of our famed lake Winnipeg walleye – a treat worth driving from California for!
Oh wow- mushrooms and filled dumplings in the same post!
My husband’s coworker recently gave us 15lbs of honey mushrooms he had found. He picked a couple and I went through the task of IDing them like you did. Once I confirmed what they were he picked the rest and delivered them to us. We did a quick dry sautee on a couple of them to try and then dehydrated the rest. I’m glad to know how the cook and now what to do with them. Thanks for the recipe!
I’ve been turned away from these many a time by snobby mycologist friends.
Last time, I actually picked them and then was told to throw them out by the guy we were out with…because they were “not worth it”. Seems silly, since they are so plentiful and easy to pick (unlike the slither-around-in-the-mud-looking-for-mud-colored-holes black chantarelle, which is a b*tch to find).
Now I know better. AND I know where there’s usually a GIANT patch of ’em right here in town!