Black Trumpet Mushrooms: The Elusive Craterellus Cornucopioides

Recently a friend and I stumbled upon some black trumpet mushrooms. I have started experimenting with preserving and preparing them. Here is the story of our discoveries and my cooking and storage experiments to date...
[see also Hen of the Woods Mushrooms]



The black trumpets appeared as if out of nowhere. We were not looking for them but, rather, were in pursuit of the more common hen of the woods mushroom.

I don't mind putting off the hen of the woods (aka: maitake) awhile for this new, delicious detour. It is still a bit early for the hen of the woods. Regardless, we went hunting for them this Saturday morning. I had already found the first specimen of the season -- two days prior -- and was overly optimistic about finding another. All of our regular oaks were still empty, unfortunately. Most hen of the woods are still just mycelia, waiting under the ground for just the right moment to show their leafy grey heads.

When I tell people about the mushroom hunting, I usually get some very worried looks. Charles recently admitted to me that he was convinced I'd gone over the cliff the first time I mentioned the idea. That was last fall, in the middle of hen of the woods season. I sold him on it, of course (did I mention that his mother calls me Dr. Death?), and now he is a man possessed. Mushrooms are like that. Once you pass the initial threshold, there really is no going back.

So the two of us were out in the woods, following paths lined with green mossy hummocks and heavy underbrush. The air was cool and smelled like the oak leaves that had fallen the previous year. Last week was rainy and the ground in some places was still damp with the remaining run-off. There were signs of deer, footprints and other spoor, and many colorful mushrooms were thriving in the dampness: their red, purple, white and grey caps popping through the forest floor.

We were visiting one of last year's best maitake oaks. The ground around it was a bare and spongy mat with no trace of the mushrooms that would soon fill the angles between the surface roots. I had almost lost hope when Charles, who had wandered down the slope toward a damp ravine, cried out "Jackpot!"

"Did you find a maitake?" I asked. He was standing in an empty space with no tree roots at all. It was unlikely that he would have found a maitake there.

"No, something even better," he said.

"What is it?" I asked, disappointed. It takes a lot of convincing to get me to try a new mushroom.

"A whole bunch of black trumpets, I think."

I had heard of the black trumpet, I knew they were related to chanterelles and, as such, would be a great score. I was not, however, equipped to identify these mushrooms.

Approaching carefully, not wanting to crush anything valuable, I scanned the ground for what might be the cone of a trumpet. It was a minute before they came into focus -- they are nearly invisible if you don't know what you are looking for. Then, all of a sudden, the forest floor grew a third dimension. Flower-like funnels, black bouquets, appeared everywhere around his feet.

Charles had an iPhone in his hand and was already scanning through Google images. He handed me the iPhone.

I am not at all careless about mushroom identification. These mushrooms, however, were said to be hard to mistake. Charles had been looking for them for the past three months and was convinced that these were the real thing. I decided to reserve judgment until I could do a bit more research. We would have been foolish, however, to leave the suspects behind so we set about picking them and gently placing them in a cloth shopping bag.

We scanned the vicinity for more of the same and, finding none, took a walk down the path to a similarly marshy area. It was a half-mile walk and completely fruitless. On the path we found ourselves dodging mountain bikers -- painfully shy about our own geeky hobby in the presence of athletes on wheels. After thirty minutes of pointless wanderings, we decided to return to our original hunting ground.

The decision was well made. Following the marshy ground, we uncovered three more patches of black trumpets before finally calling it a day. The take was well over a pound of mushrooms and, once back at my home computer, I was able to identify them, with unquestionable certainty, as the real mccoy.

The next thing to do was to cook some and see how they tasted. I sauteed a handful -- more than I would have eaten of most new mushrooms -- in butter with salt, basil, oregano and rosemary. The flavor was rich and delicious. The Italian herbs gave them a taste not unlike a pepperoni and mushroom pizza. The mushrooms, themselves, had a buttery, almost fruity smell to them. I have read it described as "apricot" but that does not describe these particular specimens very well. There is a delicate, rich sweetness to the smell, but I would not say apricot.

While waiting to see if I would have any negative reaction to my first dose, I set about processing the majority of my remaining mushrooms. I split them and removed a number of slugs and bugs, the latter of which would invariably make a run for it before succumbing to the butt of my knife on the butcher block.

Next I washed the mushrooms... I know, I know! Washing mushrooms is sacrilege but I just can't leave trails of slug slime on something I intend to eat. There was LOTS of slug slime, and I had seen too many bugs dash out of the trumpets not to think of the bug bits they might have left behind. Others should use their best judgment (and perhaps a nice clean paint brush). I don't advocate washing if your stomach is stronger than mine. I just can't do it, so apologies to the purists of the mushroom world.

I had read that the trumpets dried well. Last fall I dried hen of the woods mushrooms successfully in the oven. For the trumpets, I used a closed oven at 170 degrees, the lowest setting I have on my oven. It took about two hours and was not the perfect solution for the trumpets. There are several things I will do differently next time. First, I might not dry such a large percentage of the haul. Seeing nearly a pound of mushrooms shrink to 1/8 their original size is incredibly disheartening. The resulting cup and a half of dried mushroom dust will go very quickly and does not seem to have the same power of flavor as the original, fresh mushrooms. Second, I will try placing parchment paper under the rack on which I am drying my mushrooms. The mushrooms that fell through the bars became completely adhered to the cookie sheet underneath. This, too, was disheartening -- especially given my diminished stock. Third, I think I may try to dry the mushrooms in a cooler environment -- like a solar dehydrator, perhaps. They seem to have cooked while drying, and this may be the reason that they did not concentrate as much flavor as I had expected.

My second experiment was a black trumpet pizza. I used a red sauce, instead of the white sauce I had seen recommended elsewhere. I also used fewer mushrooms, sprinkling them less liberally than in the pictures I had seen. The result was a fine pizza but there was much less black trumpet flavor than I was expecting. The strength of the red sauce probably masked the trumpets somewhat, and the fact that I did not pile them on was probably a mistake. I will, in the future, use more mushrooms but I have not decided whether or not to use a red sauce. I am not as fond of white pizza.

For my third experiment, I vacuum sealed a small number of mushrooms and frozen them. This is against the recommendations of many authorities. Most recommend that you sauté your black trumpets and freeze them in a broth. Having successfully frozen hen of the woods mushrooms last year , I wanted to experiment with black trumpets in my new vacuum sealer -- and vacuum sealing broth is impossible of course, not to mention completely unnecessary since you can easily press any air out of the bag before sealing. So I took a handful of fresh trumpets and vacuum sealed them. In the bag they flattened out so much that they looked like a piece of beef jerkey. They then sat in the freezer for a week for the sake of the experiment.

Just tonight, I tossed the same handful of frozen mushrooms into a pan with olive oil, garlic and butter. The sautéed mushrooms had a hint of bitterness that was not there in the original sauté, and were slightly less tender but not offensively so -- really no tougher than sauteed spinach. The taste was still very good to my palate and, for the flexibility I gained by preserving them this way, I will definitely do it again. It will be interesting to see if the bitterness is more or less pronounced in other recipes. Approach this particular method with caution but don't avoid it altogether if you have the luxury of experimentation and an ample supply of mushrooms.

I hope to spend several more days in the woods before the remaining black trumpets succumb to frost. Now that I know where they thrive, I am optimistic that I may find another treasure trove before the season is over.

Hen of the Woods Mushrooms: Preserving and Storing the American Maitake

Last fall, a friend and I experimented with freezing, drying and canning hen of the woods (maitake) mushrooms. These were our discoveries:
[see also Black Trumpet Mushrooms]



Disclaimer

This blog post is not to be used for mushroom identification purposes. If you are interested in wild mushrooms you should seek professional (and possibly psychiatric) help. I take no responsibility for the consequences of your bad judgment. I have enough trouble dealing with the consequences of my own.

Introduction

Last fall, my friend Charles and I collected a number of Grifola frondosa mushrooms. Commonly known as "hen of the woods" or "maitake" mushrooms, they are easy to spot and identify . Being novice mushroom collectors, we decided that it would be best to start with a type that was simple to identify and fairly easy to locate. We ended up collecting about twenty or thirty pounds of maitake between the two of us. It was so much that it would have been impossible for us to eat it all before it went limp in the refrigerator.

My wife has less interest in this sort of thing than I do. She is a bit more down to earth and prefers her food to come from somewhere other than the base of a tree at the side of a country road. Even if she had been more enthusiastic about the earthy flavor of these hen of the woods mushrooms, we never would have eaten our entire share in the short time that they were available.

Charles had the same dilemma. His wife, though more interested, was pregnant at the time. Their other child was only three and it seemed a bit dangerous to start feeding him wild mushrooms at such a young age. The obvious solution was to experiment with various means of storing our bounty. Between the two of us, we tried three methods of preservation: canning, drying and loose freezing. I thought it might be interesting to report on the results of these experiments and to pass along what we learned in the process.

Hen of the woods mushrooms are found in the northeast between late August (in Maine) and November (southern New York). In Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts, we had good luck from late September through the end of October, 2008. We got started a little late, however. Charles reports that his wife spotted the first Grifola already, during the last week of August. So the hunt is on.

The Grifola frondosa mushrooms that we collected last year were up to a foot in diameter and ranged from one to five pounds in weight. They look a bit like the grey-brown children of a cauliflower and a coral. They do not taste very good raw but, freshly picked and sauteed, they are richly flavorful mushrooms that cook up nicely in butter and garlic. Frondosa make a brilliant side dish and a delicious mushroom soup. They go well with poultry and would be a great addition to chicken or turkey stuffing. I like them with my eggs instead of home fries. One might substitute these mushrooms anywhere that a cooked portabello would be appropriate but where twice as much flavor is acceptable. It is always bad form, of course, to serve wild mushrooms to anyone who is not very excited and completely aware of the potential consequences of mis-identification, so I did not experiment too widely with larger-scale preparations and was hesitant to involve my extended family in the process. In the end, my sister was the only one brave enough to try one. She was thrilled with the result and will be excited to hear that the season is once more upon us.

Storage Methods

The methods that I, personally, used for storage were loose freezing (as opposed to vacuum freezing) and drying. I bought a vacuum bag sealer too late in the process but intend to try this method soon as an alternative to loose freezing.

To freeze the mushrooms, I used the following process:

1. I washed each head in a large pot. To do so, I filled the pot with water, turned the head upside down and dunked it forcefully into and out of the water until the water was dirtier than the mushroom itself. This process was repeated with fresh water until there was no more dirt to come free.


2. Next, I separate the heads into smaller, cauliflower-like, stalks, picked out the twigs, cut off the embedded dirty bits and rewashed the remaining stalks thoroughly again.


3. I then dried the stalks and froze them overnight on a cookie sheet. This helped keep the stalks from freezing together so that I would be able to thaw only what I needed for any given recipe.


4. Once frozen, I placed the stalks into Ziplock® freezer bags and pressed out all the air I could. This was a real challenge, as the frozen stalks had a lot of air between them and were sharp enough to penetrate a freezer bag.

To dry the mushrooms I used a similar process, the only difference being that I placed the cookie sheet in a warm oven on the lowest setting (170 degrees) with the oven door open. I let them sit like this for perhaps 24 hours, warming up the oven every few hours and then shutting it off. In the end, I closed the oven door for an hour with the heat on. I think I would probably experiment with closed door drying next time, as this seemed to dry them much more quickly. I don't want to cook them, though, so this will require some experimentation. My result, however, was quite satisfactory. The pieces were extremely lightweight, shriveled and could be easily snapped without bending, even at their thickest points. An entire three pound maitake, dessicated, can fit into a 16 ounce hummus container, and I have successfully stored such a mushroom for an entire year.

To can mushroom soup base, you are pretty much on your own. I did not prepare the mushrooms this way, so I cannot give any advice except the basics and to suggest that canning is a potentially dangerous process so you should proceed with caution. Charles found the recipe here and, against the advice of the author, substituted chicken stock for water. He also held out the cream, to be added after the can was opened. It was a delicious, peppery soup that went well with poultry and winter vegetables.

Preparation of Stored Mushrooms

The frozen mushrooms were easily thawed and prepared just as if they were fresh. As time went on, however, they began to exchange odors in the freezer with my other frozen goods. They also became tougher as the water from the mushrooms turned to frosty crystals on the stalks and florets. After three months, I lost interest in the frozen version and, after six months, I tossed the remaining pieces.

I had kept the dried mushrooms in a small container in the back of our kitchen storage cabinet. I had not bothered to reconstitute any of them until this weekend for no reason except laziness and the fact that nobody else in my household was likely to eat them with me. The coming mushroom season made me curious, however, so last night I decided to soak enough for breakfast.

This morning I tried the reconstituted Grifola frondosa, and they are definitely worth the trouble. They were a bit less tender than fresh but, considering their year in storage, plumped up more than I expected. I compensated by cutting them smaller than I would have with fresh, and they were a tasty side to my morning eggs. I would consider them as a fun, healthy alternative to bacon or home fries.

To prepare dried hen of the woods mushrooms:

1. Place the dessicated bits in a bowl and cover them with plenty of warm water. Place a plate on top to keep out any insects or stray debris.


2. Let them sit for 30 minutes or more, until they are elastic and easily cut with a sharp kitchen knife. They will not grow back to their original size, and the stalks will remain somewhat shriveled. I estimate that they are perhaps half their former size.


3. I chose to slice the pieces more thinly than I would have with fresh or frozen mushrooms. I diced them into 3mm to 5mm bits and pan fried them with salt and butter. The results were exceptional. If I'd had garlic on hand, I imagine that the flavor would have been indistinguishable from fresh. They could easily be substituted for fresh mushrooms anywhere that diced bits would be acceptable.

Reconstituted mushroom observations:

• The reconstituted pieces were a little bit tougher than fresh or freshly frozen mushrooms. The stalks were the toughness of, perhaps, al dente green beans (without any unpleasant stringiness), the fronds were almost as tender as fresh -- the texture reminded me of a seaweed salad.


• The reconstituted mushrooms were not quite as fragrant while cooking. This is not a bad thing, really, as the fresh mushrooms have the tendency to fill a room and linger -- a bit like lobster -- well after the meal is over. Twenty minutes after cooking the dried version, the smell was almost gone. If they were fresh, I would have been smelling them for 24 hours. This may have something to do with the lack of garlic, however, so I will need to test this with garlic later.

Conclusions

Compared to freezing in loose bags, except for the very short-term, drying is definitely preferable. The resulting product they will keep indefinitely and can be stored without electricity in a very small space. I think I would prefer this method for long-term storage even to freezing in vacuum-sealed bags. However, vacuum freezing gives easier access without reconstituting and, if done correctly, will probably give a better result for at least the first three to six months.

Canning is a great way to provide quick access to a liquid version but is obviously less flexible than drying or freezing. Soup could easily be made from the dried stalks, and I imagine there would be no discernible difference in flavor. The difference would be in the prep time. It is always nice to have a nice can of soup on hand on a cold winter day.

Bon Appetit!