Making mushroom jerky! Slices dried well on hot rocks around the fire.
A Hawkwing mushroom -- evidently delicious if sauteed a while, otherwise sometimes bitter.
Possibly an inky cap -- delicious when young, but causes adverse reactions when consumed with alcohol.
2010 was a fantastic year for mushroom hunters throughout Colorado. There was plenty of rainfall, and temperatures stayed generally mild. Except for in the dryer regions near Denver, mushrooms were everywhere along the trail -- sometimes sprouting inches from the path... or right in the middle of it! And after you've been walking for four or five days without fresh foods, some fungi can look pretty darned tempting. There's one that looks like creme brulee, others that have a fantastic sweet scent, and up in high alpine meadows the ground is littered with what looks like loaves of bread. Not only are mushrooms nutritious, but they're also mainly water. This was a great water year, but there were still places where I'd have gladly snacked on a high-water food source -- one I didn't have to carry -- in order to make my water bottles stretch a little further.
The only thing is... how do you keep from ending up in the hospital, or worse? Quite a conundrum.
Fortunately, I met Katrina along the trail. She runs the Turtle Lake Refuge wild foods restaurant, in Durango. She was walking from Durango to Telluride in order to be an instructor at the wild mushroom festival there. She recommended two varieties that are fool-proof to identify -- one of them is probably the best mushroom I've ever tasted, wild or not. I ate pounds of it, made jerky of it, put it in my soup every evening. I present to you:
The King Bolete.
Scattered at high elevations like loaves of bread, these monsters can be bigger than footballs or small as a golf ball. They are very, very common, and are easy to identify due to four distinctive features: First, they have no gills, but rather white or yellow sponge on the underside. In very young ones, the sponge is white and so fine-grained you have to look closely to see the pores. This is the most important ID characteristic. Second, they have a thick, squat stem. Third, they are a pretty tan/brown/rust on top, resembling a loaf of bread or a dinner roll. Four, the flesh is white, pleasantly aromatic, and crisp. They usually grow over 10,000 feet -- the first half of segment 27, for example, has thousands of kings scattered *everywhere.*
A huge bolete.
There are a number of related bolete species -- so don't go eating just anything with sponge instead of gills -- but in Colorado, only a couple very rare ones are toxic. They don't look like the kings, have bright orange or red undersides, and the flesh isn't white but rather stains blue when bruised. They may smell like carrion. If you can manage to gag one down, it'll make you darned sick for a while. If you're not certain, don't eat it.
Other common boletes are edible, they just might not taste quite like the king. The queen bolete is rarer than the king but has even better flavor; the queen is a darker purple/tan on top but otherwise identical. Slippery Jacks grow at lower elevations, have a thin stem, usually have a slippery/slimy film on top which should be peeled off, and are pretty bland, verging on insipid.
An unidentified bolete of some sort; not poisonous, but probably not tasty.
Kings and queens, however, are fantastic raw or lightly cooked. If you can figure out how to saute them so much of their liquid evaporates, using the cooking gear available to you on the trail, they're even better. The flavor is nutty, earthy, a little like vanilla. Try oriental ramen with a tin of kippered herring fillets and a whole lotta kings. Or add them to any stroganoff or cheese dish. Scrumptious!
Cheesy tuna with lightly cooked king boletes -- tasty and filling!
One caveat: boletes are much beloved by pretty much the whole animal kingdom. You'll often find places where bears or deer have eaten every king in a field, leaving only bits of the stem behind. Sadly, insects also like them. Especially at lower elevations or in wet places, older boletes may have grubs or worms inside. You can either trim off the bad parts on big mushrooms, or only collect the smaller mushrooms, which the bugs haven't found yet.
The underside of a king bolete.
The Giant Puffball
In the fields near the end of segment 24, there were dozens of these large white fungi, most as big as soccer balls. When they're that big, puffballs look like no other mushroom on earth -- you can't make a mistake with identification. They're best picked before the top has split open, when the flesh inside is white and firm but never hard. Old mushrooms are pithy and have a mealy texture. Shades of yellow or blue inside or a bad smell mean that the mushroom is really old; if you somehow gag it down, it will cause upset stomach.
You can eat the nice firm puffballs raw or cooked. If there's a thin, leathery outer layer, you should peel it off, because it may taste strange. Puffballs are best when cut into steaks and browned in butter, or breaded and fried, or paired with strong cheeses -- they have a strong, earthy, mushroomy flavor. You can toast them on a stick over a campfire like marshmallows, but they're also alright just cubed and simmered in soup.
Small or immature puffballs, ones around golf-ball size or smaller, are a little more complicated. There are many different varieties, some with spikes, some with studs or lumps, some crackly and pearl-shiny, some tan and pear-shaped on the outside (white inside.) All are edible, though some are very bland. The problem is, you need to sit down with every one you collect and a sharp knife, and slice it down from top to bottom. This is because small or young puffballs resemble baby aminitas, many of which will kill you dead. Which is something you probably do not want.
A cluster of baby puffballs.
If you cut your baby puffball open (from top to bottom, remember) and find that it has a design inside -- actually the developing cap and gills of another mushroom species -- it is not a puffball. It may be poisonous, it may be delicious, even experienced mushroom hunters can't tell which. Throw it away, and wipe off your knife. If you cut open your puffball and find only pure, white, snowy insides, then it's a puffball. (Deep-fried meatless meatballs, anyone?)
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Russula #1
Russula #2
Russulas, like the three above samples, grew thickly in the dry pine woods at all elevations. They often emerge still covered with dirt and pine needles. The white one, a short stemmed russula, is edible but very bland. The red one with the white stem has a powerfully peppery taste and can make you sick. Another very common kind -- a darker dusky purple topped fungi sometimes with a slightly rose-blushed stem -- was the delicious shrimp mushroom, which tastes sort of like its name. Wish I'd known what I was passing up!
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This little guy looked perfect and tempting -- but broke when I tried to examine it. The pic isn't a good one, but it's possible this was a Destroying Angel. It's evidently a good idea to avoid all pale, veiled fungi until you're a lot better at identifying 'shrooms than I am.
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View of bottom
View of top.
Another specimen. This large white mushroom started showing up all over the place, towards the end of the hike. Sometimes they were dinner-plate sized. It may be either a leucopaxillus or a clitocybe -- the two families have both tasty and toxic members.
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Unknown!
Unidentified... but looks delicious....
Also unidentified.
Still not sure what these guys are.
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I believe this is a trophy cluster of oysters -- I should have picked some and turned them over to check out the underside.
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This might be a cluster of edible-but-bland velvet foot, cousin to the enoki found in sushi... I should have checked out the undersides!
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Some kind of a Pholiota -- smelled like pizza, but not usually eaten as it makes some people sick.
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A club or strap coral mushroom cluster.
Another club coral mushroom, possibly the 'flat-topped' variety, which is sweet enough to serve for dessert!
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Fly Aminita #1
Fly aminita #2 -- older mushrooms tend to fade to yellow or orange, but still have the spots over the top. These are toxic -- but also famous for being intoxicating.
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A whole clearing full of apricot-scented mushrooms (scrumptious, juicy chanterelles.) Oh, if only I'd known then what I know now!
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My only real regret about hiking the CT is that I didn't bring a mushroom ID guide. I cannot adequately describe how plentiful and perfect the mushrooms were -- and a big plate of oyster 'shrooms for dinner appetizers would have been fantastically welcome... especially on those segments where I, erm, miscalculated how much food I needed. A guide would have been well worth the extra six ounces, and I would have been much healthier and far more entertained on the trail. Check out the pocket guides by David Arora, who is very strange, but knows his stuff.
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