As fall blows in with the sudden blast of cold this past week, it’s time to start thinking about and keeping a look out for fall mushrooms. Just like plants, mushrooms are usually seasonal, with a few exceptions. You’ll see far more mushrooms in the fall than in the spring, so it’s a great time to jump into learning to identify these stealthy organisms.

I recommend beginner foragers stick to easy to identify mushrooms that do not have any poisonous look-alikes. Poisonous look-alikes in the mushroom world can lead to deadly consequences more easily than with plants because mushrooms are always cooked, leading to more consumption of the toxin. Also, sometimes poisonous mushrooms taste fine.

Identification:

Chicken of the Woods, often shortened to “Chickens,” is an easy beginner mushroom to start with. It’s still recommended that you find a mushroom guide to the first few foraging trips you take just to be sure. Always use caution and be 100% sure before consuming anything.

Chicken of the Woods has rooster-like vibrant colors that are easily spotted in the woods, hence the name. They only grow on trees or out of the ground above roots. A nickname for them is “sulfur mushroom.”

You can sometimes find them in massive clusters too big for one person to harvest – so it’s an amazing survival food and food expense reducer during tough times.

These characteristics must exist for it to be chicken of the woods:

1. It grows in yellow-orange brackets.
2. It grows on decaying wood, or up from decaying wood underground. (In the latter case be sure to dig and see.)
3. It has small pores on the underside of the brackets which are either yellow, or less commonly white. If there are gills or teeth, it isn’t a Chicken.
4. When cut in half it has a texture similar to cooked, white meat chicken, especially half-way-to or near the base.

If any of these don’t seem to be correct, assume the mushroom is something else.

Harvest Season: It’s hard these days to predict the exact week or month when plants or mushrooms will be available due to the extreme variations we are seeing from year to year. Looking at the entire United States, the season stays within April to November.

Habitat: Newly dead trees, either standing or fallen. On standing trees, usually at waist height or lower, but occasionally high up.

Edibility: All mushrooms must be cooked to unlock their nutritional value. The longer you cook them, the better (as long as you don’t burn them!). They can be used in any recipe to replace tofu or chicken. Soups, stir fries, and even chicken nuggets are all great ways to use it.

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