Chicken-of-the-woods-fest

[rachelkg]

Joined a local mushroom club recently. The chicken-of-the-woods mushroom (Laetiporus sulphureus; some other similar Laetiporus species share the common name and culinary properties) is in season, and one of the club members offered up a beautiful specimen, something like three pounds of young tender shelves. She finds them often, but is allergic, so passes on the bounty.

I made three things with it:

Tuesday night I cut it up and sorted it into biggish tender pieces, smallish tender pieces, and woody bits. I breaded and fried a bunch of the biggish tender pieces according to this recipe: https://foragerchef.com/chicken-fried-chicken-of-the-woods/ and ate them with a white wine/butter/green-peppercorn pan sauce. (I meant it to be chicken piccata of the woods, but mistook green peppercorns for capers). Very tasty if I do say so myself, I think I'll reprise it tonight with the rest of the biggish pieces, esp. if I can coordinate with the housemates to feed it to them too. The breading helps to hold the moisture in to effectively steam the inside of the mushroom. Chicken of the woods, like almost all mushrooms, needs to be thoroughly cooked, and a dry sauté can wind up tough.

I roasted the woody bits in the oven with shallots and carrots, then simmered them and some herbs and bits of coral mushrooms in salted water for a couple hours to make stock https://foragerchef.com/roasted-chicken-or-hen-of-the-woods-stock/ It came out lovely and flavorful.

And I pickled the small tender pieces in an unsweetened, relatively mild vinegar brine -- tried a couple pieces, I'm pleased with the texture and the brine flavor is mild enough they could be incorporated into a dish later somewhat similarly to fresh mushrooms. Refrigerating them, didn't can them, but they'll last a lot longer this way than the fresh mushrooms would.
https://foragerchef.com/pickled-baby-chicken-of-the-woods/

Comments

[rachelkg]

True! If you're starting with large, firm mushrooms it's a good idea to cut them up pretty small first so they get properly exposed to the fat. If you use more fat and cut them up really small, that's called "duxelles"; it freezes well.

Chicken of the Woods' firmer texture is one of its finer assets, better served by not cooking it down so far.

[acelightning73]

Duxelles is something you want to have in your freezer, along with some meat cut up for stir-fry (a ziplok bag of that defrosts quickly in a bowl of room-temperature water) and some frozen orange juice concentrate (and some instant yeast) and homemade broth in small packages (ice cubes up to small Tupperware containers). If my son shows up with his wife and five of their friends, I can create a tasty, filling dinner for us all with stir-fried chicken, some broth in the sauce, and whatever other ingredients I have around or can get quickly.

I find the taste, texture, and very existence of mushrooms revolting. And some of the mycotoxins are pretty horrific in their effects. Even though I was a hippie, I never tried "magic mushrooms", simply because they were mushrooms. "We won't discuss the nutmeg, or the whole box of NoDoze, or the homemade absinthe." Or the fact that I worked as a radio technician (and occasional DJ) because being close to a high-powered low-frequency transmitter made me high.