January Thaw: Chicken of the Woods

Chicken of the woods mushroom, which I found on a blueberry-picking trip this past August. This is one of the easier-to-identify wild mushrooms. The sulfur-colored underside is sponge-like; there are no gills.

It's January, and it has been cold here in Massachusetts: soup weather. In need of a little warmth and facing somewhat limited refrigerator contents, I decided to pull a packet of vacuum-sealed chicken of the woods mushroom from my freezer and do a little experimental cooking.

This was attempt number two at eating the mushroom, which I found growing prolifically (as it usually does) on an old log by the side of a trail this past August. My husband, older two boys, and I were on our way up a mountain to pick some wild blueberries when I spotted the bright orange and yellow mushrooms just a little bit into the woods. The only chicken of the woods mushroom I had seen outside of a book was a specimen that was growing across the lake from a friend's house in Maine (we had to kayak across the water to get to it, and if it had not been past its prime, we would have had a somewhat challenging time harvesting it because it was growing on a tree along a steep bank). I was not entirely sure I had the same mushroom, but I remembered that no other mushroom looks like chicken of the woods, so I was confident enough to grab several large chunks of it (and to make one of my sons and my husband do the same) on our way back to the car.

Another view of chicken of the woods.

A consultation with my mushroom book and my friend, who had eaten chicken of the woods previously and lived to tell about it, confirmed my suspicions, and I prepared to cook my find. I had read that chicken of the woods can absorb liquid as well as any eggplant, so I sautéed the mushroom in a little oil and a little broth. And a little more oil and a little more broth. And a little more. Yep, definitely eggplant-like. I tasted the mushroom at several points during cooking, and although the flavor was good (reminiscent of chicken, as the name suggests), I found the results to be a bit dry. I added the mushroom to some risotto, and although everyone ate it, no one particularly liked it. I had collected a large quantity of mushroom, and it seemed a shame not to make use of so much free food (I hadn't even collected all of the mushroom, given that we had been prepared for blueberry picking but not for mushroom collecting; we had no good means of transporting our quarry, and I didn't want to find out we'd gone out of our way to carry something poisonous out of the woods), but I didn't know what to do with it, so I used my vacuum sealer to make little packets of sautéed mushroom and stashed the packets in the freezer.

And now we fast forward to January and the bitterly cold soup weather. I wondered whether cream of mushroom soup, in which the mushrooms would be pureed and the texture would be less noticeable, might be a good option. I chose a cookbook and looked for a cream-of-mushroom-soup recipe, but what I found instead was a recipe for beef, barley, and mushroom soup. Although it didn't involve pureeing the mushroom, I decided to base my creation on that recipe instead (see below for my recipe).

One recent sunny day, I took my sons and their new baby sister
(born in November!) on a new trail, where the boys found
this exposed branch that made quite a good motorcycle for three.
Although it's not prime foraging weather and certainly is not
mushroom season, we can still enjoy a bowl of hot soup with wild
mushrooms from the freezer when we get home from hiking.

I am pleased to report that the texture of the mushroom improved considerably after an hour or so of simmering (I did chop the mushroom into small pieces first). In fact, the results were good enough that I invited my mother to stay for dinner (she'd been over at the house anyway; we'd just gotten back from a day of painting walls at our new home, still under construction). My mother loves both soup and mushrooms, so perhaps a better indicator of how things turned out was that my middle son (who loves mushrooms but isn't usually a soup fan) kept raving about the dinner and wanted to make sure I had more mushroom in the freezer so I could make the soup again. My eldest son and my husband, who both like soup but usually detest mushrooms, enjoyed their meals as well (in the interest of a complete report, my youngest son and I also liked our soup).

That makes three wild mushrooms I have successfully identified and enjoyed eating (the others were chanterelles and hen of the woods). And come to think of it, the two supposed mushroom haters in my family liked both of the wild mushrooms they tried (I'm the only one who tried the chanterelles, but only because the others weren't there). At this rate, I just might turn us all into mushroom lovers. Stay tuned!

Chicken-of-the-Woods Soup with Beef and Barley

This is a rough recipe; I didn't measure all ingredients.

Brown beef (stew meat of your choice, cut into bite-sized chunks) in a little oil over medium-high heat. Add 2 carrots, 2 stalks of celery, and one onion, all chopped. Sauté over medium heat 5 min or until vegetables are tender. Add 1 can diced tomatoes, 2 quarts beef broth, 3 thyme sprigs, 1/2 cup pearl barley, and a large quantity of finely chopped chicken of the woods mushroom. Bring to a boil and simmer 45-60 minutes or until barley is cooked and beef is tender.