Hello YouTube, it's RJ here welcome to old man of the woods. This channel is about me and my wife who is behind the scenes Spending time in the woods finding identifying and collecting edibles and edibles mainly wild mushrooms but plants and fruits as well If you think winter is not the time for foraging because it's too cold for anything delicate to survive Well, that means you'll be missing a lot of choice edibles Winter in fact is my second favorite season when it comes to mushroom hunting next to fall cuz it's mosquito free spider net free and almost competitors free Well, I mean much fewer foragers and absolutely zero maggots, right? So in today's video, I'm going to present ten edible mushrooms that we found in November and December Most of them are choice edibles, but some of them have poisonous lookalikes and I will cover that too Then I will share how we turn them into Yummy dishes and I bet you'll like them so stay tuned First one the famous Lion's Mane Covered by teeth, white when young and yellowish with age Hard to be confused with any other mushrooms and definitely one of our favorites We got the luck to find multiple heads this year. Some in October and November and more in December So if you are willing to go into some deep woods Chances are that you will find this mushroom of throughout the winter In past videos, I've shared three ways of cooking lines means butter sherry, sweet sour and grilled cheese But here is something new popcorn Lion's Mane Lion's Mane can sometimes be sour and bitter To get rid of the taste rinse the mushroom under water and squeeze the liquid out Repeat several times to get super clean, non-sour Lion's Mane pieces Season clean mushroom chunks with spices of your choice. we use black pepper popcorn garlic powder paprika Plus a pinch of salt Add a Tablespoon of flour to absorb any liquid brought out by the salt So the idea is to make the mushroom surfaces as dry as possible. So the batter can stick better. To Make the batter mix one part of flour with one part of tapioca starch Plus a teaspoon of baking soda dissolve the mixture in water and Add some salt and pepper to season Bath the mushroom in batter then they are good to fry in batches if you use a small pot. Bring the oil temperature up and do a quick second round fry for a crunchier result. Here you can add some Thai basil leaves Now we've got the super crispy and juicy popcorn Lion's Mane and they go well with honey mustard and tartar sauce. Then meet the resinous polypore, a late for mushroom with numerous tiny pores rather than gills under the cap It's quite easy to identify Especially when it's young three indicators First look under the cap and you will see there is a folded part hidden beneath the root and attached to the stump Second this mushroom tends to exude reddish droplets. Hence the name resinous polypore Third see the white belt on the brim of the dark cap That's the part you want to harvest and it's also the only part you can chew Resinous polypore tastes better than it looks. I highly recommend dry sauteing as for all spongy mushrooms After that, you can stir fry in butter and serve directly or like my wife is doing here Mince them into small pieces and mix into batter with green onions and dried shrimps to make a pancake Our third mushroom is... No, not this one. This is its poisonous look-alike deadly Galerina or funeral Bell Yeah, you get the idea so you don't want to confuse it with our third edible mushroom, the honey mushroom, Armillaria gallica to be specific. The gallica species grows in small clusters has brown caps and A web-like frail partial veil that will later leave a ring zone on the stem. Unfortunately the same characteristics applies to deadly galerinas, too But there are still ways to tell them apart Just remember three things First the honey has fine hairs on the cap and the stems while the galerina is bold Second the honey is much sturdier than the flimsy galerina. And The third the honey has white flesh and spore print Whereas the deadly galerina has brown flesh and dark brown spore print You can expect to see a armillaria gallicas from October to December But in December, they probably are too old to harvest Honey mushrooms are very crunchy and won't get soggy after being fully cooked And by the way, never wasted the stems of young honey mushrooms, there are as tasty and even crunchier than the caps My wife's favorite recipe is the honey fried- tofu stew First pan fry the tofu until both sides are golden This will take around three minutes for each side To prevent the oil from popping you'd better dry the tofu with paper tower beforehand In another pot add 2 cups of water then have a cup of soy sauce mirin and sake mixing the ratio of 1 to 1 to 1 and 1 teaspoon of sugar Then add fish cakes fried tofu And the mushroom Simmer for around 10 minutes until mushrooms get fully cooked and the tofu well absorb the flavor With this recipe you can use any stock to substitute water and you can add some veggies like carrots and peas for nutrition and colors but This dish is tasty as is This guy is pretty easy to identify the pheasants back mushroom, which really lives up to its name. For the cooking purpose palm-sized ones are the best Although you can also harvest and eat the outer edge from a bigger and older specimen We didn't end up cooking this pheasants back, but instead dried it under the sun and keep it in our dry mushroom collections the fifth, shrimp of the woods, Shrimp of the woods is quite unique because it's a result of one species of fungi parasitized by another species For a detailed story check my other video by clicking the link on the right corner You can add the shrimp of the woods to any dishes where you would use real shrimps. shrimp fried rice, for example Again dry saute first So your dish won't get ruined by all the liquids contained in the mushroom and you want to brown the mushroom to bring out its aroma All these pieces are from that one giant shrimp of the woods I just showed by the way But if you have more to add that's better because once cook the shrimp of the words tastes just like shrimps What follows is to do a stir fried rice. and if you don't know how make scrambled eggs with 2 to 3 eggs set aside while there's still some liquid eggs remain you will find them with rice again later. add oil saute minced garlic for a while Throwing some frozen or fresh vegetable cuts Then add rice. leftover rice is better here because it's drier Then scrambled egg and shrimp of the woods Stir fry for another 5 minutes on high heat or until the grains get loose and well separated Sometimes I like to stir fry for a bit longer to lightly brown the rice and veggies If you like stir-fried rice some browned shrimp of the words will bring that to a whole new level Now number six the oyster mushrooms There are different species of oyster mushrooms and most of them have a purple grey spore print Which is very unique and the key identifying feature But make sure you do the print on a white background Otherwise, you won't see the beautiful color but only a common white print You basically can find oyster mushrooms all year long There are many ways to cook our mushrooms, but in winter we always go with hot pot Yes blewits. Blewits are winter mushrooms. I found them mostly in November and in December after rains, though You may start to spot some since early fall or even late summer The blewit has this beautiful lilac color, but in my experience as the weather gets colder they turn into light tan Though you should still be able to detect some lilac hues on the gills and flash 22 Fahrenheit. Wow, it's totally frozen Blewit. actually I think it's good because it's a frozen. It's like frozen in the fridge. Keep it fresh You can touch it. It's a frozen like a stick That's a joy of hunting mushrooms, you never know what you're gonna find It's honey nice. Oh, it's cort. Oh my god right next to blewit. Maybe it's a cort - no, it's a blewit yeah, I think a blewit? no. It's perfect look like a quarter mushroom, which is poisonous See these webs these are partial veils and they will leave the ring zone on the stem. But the blewit has bear stamp. Yeah also see the gills The cort takes on the dark brown color, but the blewit is light tan Sometimes the curt can be as lilac. So the safe way to differentiate the two is to do a spore print. The blue it has light tan spores whereas the court has brown spores It's too hard I know it's like frozen meat you need sharper knife The blewit has a similar texture as a button or portobello mushroom and that makes it great for the cream of mushroom saute a cup of minced onion oil When onions get tender toss in mushroom slices I Know that's a lot for a small pot but they were shrink considerably Saute the mushroom in its own juice and spiced with herbs of your choice Rosemary thyme basil and parsley will be good When the liquid almost evaporate add two tablespoons of flour Try to brown the flour without burning it Then it's time to add some liquid I use one part of white wine One part of the whole fat milk plus some heavy cream Simmer on low heat for around 20 minutes. stir occasionally Then with a hand mixer and survey the French toast, how can you not like it The 8th mushroom is the brick cap We know there are the brick caps not the poisonous look-alike Sulphur Tuft because the cap is brick red and the gills have no greenish hue But I'm not sure how similar the two species could look like Because we are yet to find our first to sulphur tuft. And as you can see Some brick caps are not so brick colored. I Want to mention I like brick caps a lot Because they have a very pleasant nutty flavor and is good with a simple saute in garlic butter Talking about the color or rather the discoloration of the brick cap, we really thought these were brick caps at first But wait, they have super slimy caps and cream-colored gills So there are the enoki mushrooms or the velvet foot Just as these specimens are still too young to develop the brownish hairy foot. Also remember the enoki doesn't have any ring or ring zone and it produces a white spore print although considered a choice edible I don't think they're as good as honeys or brick caps as they're bland and easy to get soggy Finally number 10. believe or not. We found more maitakes in November in December then in September and October It's already in November I'd oh, here's a pretty small, honey They are completely bug free which means they can sit in the fridge up to almost one month My two cents: fridged maitakes tastes much better than frozen ones and completely dried ones Maitakes are perfect for stews and it's the easiest to do a stew using an instant pot Or any high pressure cooker. So this is an instant pot recipe: tomato beef maitake. To prepare soak 1.5 pounds of beef in water for 2 hours to remove the blood it contains You can skip this step if you don't mind the blood Cut a cross into each tomato and immerse the tomatoes in hot water you see four medium sized tomatoes here, but we actually used five and six maybe even better for your reference. a hot bath will make the tomato skin pretty easy to remove This step is optional, too What is not optional is to break the maitake into small pieces and rinse carefully and thoroughly The structure decides it can trap a lot of dirts grasses and branches in In the instant pot saute some ginger garlic and the whites of green onions you can use a sautee program But I don't feel the temperature is high enough. So I go to stew directly and the setting is high-pressure 45 minutes The steam won't gather before you put the lid on At tomato, and some leftover carrots got smuggled in as well Saute until tomato juice comes out Toss in a piece of bay leaf and one star anise Then add the beef and mushrooms. season with salt soy sauce plus a bit of white vinegar Then put the lid and left the rest to the pressure cooker Not a particularly good picture, but I guarantee you it's very yummy simple but yummy alrighty, I'll say our late fall Winter foraging has been very fruitful so far. It has been raining for days and it is actually raining right now The temperature is around fourty-ish. I guess there will probably be more mushrooms growing and I can't wait to see what we'll find But before that Merry Christmas and Happy New Year See you guys in 2019
