How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying

Mushroom identification can be daunting for beginners, with Latin names and spore prints used to differentiate hard-to-identify mushrooms.

In his new book, How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying: An Absolute Beginners Guide to Identifying 29 Wild Edible Mushrooms, Frank Hyman focuses on edible mushrooms that are easy to identify.

Easy-to-Identify Edible Mushrooms

Hyman suggests starting with easy-to-identify mushrooms when learning to forage — mushrooms that can easily be distinguished from non-edible ones.

Here are some of the mushrooms that he talks about in this episode:

• Chicken of the Woods. “It will look like a pizza sticking our of a tree.”
• Morel. Easy to distinguish from the non-edible false morel because the entire interior is hollow when sliced in half from top to bottom (the false morel has chambers within it.)
• Black Trumpet (a.k.a. Horn of Plenty). These mushrooms, which look like little bugles, are hollow tubes. Pick it up and look through it length-wise, as if it were a telescope.
• Giant Puffball. Slice in half to see that the interior is solid white. “If it’s white like a piece of tofu, you’re good to go,” says Hyman. If you see the outline of a mushroom within, or if it’s not white — don’t eat it.

More than Dinner

Hyman points out that along with the culinary uses of foraged mushrooms, there’s another reason people might consider foraging: It’s a fun outdoor activity; it’s time outdoors, in nature.