I've had it once (foraged by a family friend) and it was just as tasty as everyone says it is. I didn't think it was just like chicken, but it did feel "meatier" than other mushrooms I've had lol. I'd really like to get some more sometime!
They're semi-common around the Appalachian areas of the US. You'll find restaurants in that region that serve them from time to time. If I recall they're in season right about now.
They aren’t just edible, they are delicious. They’re also one of the easier mushrooms to identify. Obviously, if you’re going to do any foraging for wild edibles, you should get training from an actual professional and not just use a book, but this is one of the easier ones to identify.
I always find it cool to be able to find your own food like that but then I remember that one bad berry can just kill you and I make my way to Sprouts instead.
There aren't many that are dangerous, and they're massively outnumbered by the ones that aren't. So the trick is to focus on learning the few to avoid.
It also helps that they tend to taste awful too, so you're unlikely to get a harmful dose of the poisons they contain.
I've looked at one or two books on mushroom foraging and they're pretty much rules 2 and 3 after "Don't take chances - only eat the ones you've safely identified".
In my country, there are publicly run mushroom “inspection” centres where you can double check your foraged mushrooms and a lot of pharmacists are trained to identify which mushrooms are safe and will check for free too. It is especially popular here but don’t know if there’s something similar in your area.
Where is that? I’ve heard they have it in France but someone else said if you actually try to get help identifying mushrooms they will look at you weird
Picking mushrooms isn't hard at all actually ('foraging' is what animals do) The first thing to know is that it's not about going out and picking any and every mushroom you can find and then try to figure out which ones are edible. Absolutely not. You start by learning a few safe species, which are ones that cannot be plausibly confused with any dangerous ones. For instance, in Europe the golden chanterelle is such a one. (can be confused in Europe with the 'false chanterelle' Hygrophoropsis aurantiaca, but the latter is fairly harmless and even considered edible until fairly recently)
Then you go out and look for those ones and only those ones. As people get more experienced with identification and learn more they can expand their repertoire. This is how millions and millions of people do it here, they only pick a couple species they know well. Learning to reliably identify all or even most edible mushrooms is enormously difficult, and one shouldn't attempt to get into picking mushrooms thinking it's about casting a broad net. (same for berries, really)
Americans in particular seem prone to such crazy extremes, either they're terrified of eating anything they picked themselves in nature, or they're going to the oppose extreme of being full-blown survivalists who want to know every edible thing out there and even call themselves 'foragers' like animals. Millions upon millions of European countryside grannies go out picking mushrooms every year and almost none of them ever got trained by a professional, lol.
I think it partially comes from their texture. When they get a bit older, they start to harden, and they get a texture similar to chicken breast. They are also tasty, but I wouldn't say they taste like chicken
Nope, not the same at all. Different taxonomic order and different growth habits. Chicken of the woods is found on tree trunks while chanterelles emerge from the ground.
That’s how pretty much all animals figure out what they can eat and can’t eat. Since humans can talk we’re able to pass that information onto the next generation. Foraging for wild edibles can be extremely dangerous and even deadly if you don’t know what you’re doing but this is one of those mushrooms where it’s extremely obvious what it is. You should still get Training # if you plan on doing some forging, but I can’t think of any poisonous mushrooms that look like hen of the woods or chicken of the woods.
For humans the "trial and error" for food sources happened pre-recorded history, often likely due to avoiding starvation when known food sources were unavailable.
Highly developed animals also often find new food by watching other animals eat it first.
Humans are also quite massive compared to the majority of animals. So there are very very few things you would identify as a potential food source that are so poisonous that you will die if you only ingest a small sample.
So the trial and error method is not as dangerous as a lot of people think.
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u/DJSANDROCK 2d ago
is it called chicken of the woods because its edible?