Wild Mushrooms -
Recipes and Tips for Cleaning, Cooking and Preserving

Learn easy methods for cleaning, preserving and cooking a variety of commonly foraged wild mushrooms of the Pacific Northwest.

This is where I will tell you all about my personal experiences harvesting, cleaning, freezing, dehydrating and cooking wild Morels. I hesitate to call them mushrooms as they are not truly mushrooms but they are a prized and delicious fungi that holds a very special place in our kitchen.

Candied Witches Butter is a sweet treat that resembles sour gummy candy and has wonderful good things inside to help keep you healthy. I'm not a nutritionist so please look up the properties of Tremella mesenterica and Tremella aurentia, commonly known as Witches Butter, to see what I mean. Witches Butter is a very easily identified fungus you can find in nearly any forest.

These are my personal experiences harvesting, cleaning, freezing, dehydrating and cooking wild oyster mushrooms. These mushrooms are prolific in the Pacific Northwest and they can be found any time conditions are right for them all year long. Delicious and fairly easy to identify, there are many varieties including a late harvest oyster I'm particularly fond of.

Have you ever wanted to grow gourmet mushrooms at home? You can! Many people like me have found growing their own mushrooms to be a truly rewarding experience and those that haven't probably just need a few tips to make it happen.

These are my personal experiences harvesting, cleaning, freezing, dehydrating and cooking Coral Mushrooms - Ramaria. Coral mushrooms are prolific in the Pacific Northwest and they can be found any time conditions are right for them all year long. Delicious and easy to identify, there are many color variations around the world, we typically find yellow and pink ones. I think I prefer the yellow.

This is a tasty dish my husband taught me! Well, he was making something similar for himself before we got married. His version was the basics, large Portobello mushrooms stuffed with mild Italian sausage then topped with mozzarella cheese. All baked together in yummy harmony. Really I just stepped it up with the addition of some mushroom marinara. Try this either way depending on how much time you have or how much energy you would like to put into dinner. Trust me it will be delicious!

This is an incredibly yummy warm spring salad. It's really a stir-fry that I serve over salad instead of rice. It starts off with lot's of garlic because we all need more garlic. Then I toss in the veggies, the shrimp, some seasonings and some butter, stir-frying them quickly and gently because these are all tender things and it doesn't take much to overcook them.

Warm and cozy, this Chinese inspired beef stir-fry with black pepper and oyster sauce will fill you up with lean protein, healthy mushrooms and veggies.

This is one of the first things I made with my new vegetable sheet cutter and I will definitely be making it again and again. I love the texture of the potatoes and parsnips cut with the sheet cutter. It's a comforting and filling casserole without being too rich and the mushroom sauce is amazing!

Harvesting your own snails requires some patience and a little bit of planning but on a daily basis you really do very little. You also control the exact day you would like to serve this divine little dish. It is also so much less traumatic than I first thought it would be. In fact it's quite simple and fascinating! I read through several recipes and articles describing the cleaning and preparing of snails until I came up with this method which works wonderfully for me.

Crispy golden brown on the bottom, moist and full of flavor on top! This makes an awesome holiday side dish for serving with anything. Traditional herbs, celery and onion are so good with the tangy sourdough bread cubes I save from the ends and pieces of homemade bread but you can use store bought sourdough if your not a bread baker. Mixing up different types of sourdough bread will give it a unique texture and flavor that's amazing!