Two of my sons were born in May,. One says that it is foolish to hunt mushrooms before his birthday which occurs during the first week of the month, The other says that it is foolish to hunt them after his birthday close to the end of May. That leaves a window of opportunity about three weeks long, depending on a number of factors. We must first have had enough warm weather and sufficient rain to coax the mushrooms to life. The grass should be green but not so tall that it hides the small, dark early morels. And you should know exactly what you are looking for, as those “sponge mushrooms” as my mother called them, take a variety of different shapes and colors as they emerge and develop.
Most mushroom hunters have favorite places and private theories about just where and when are the best conditions for success. Some always look around the bases of dead elm trees. Others swear by clusters of May-apples. Pastures that have been occupied by horses are popular, as is timber containing a good percentage of pine trees. But there are exceptions to all those, and I’ve experienced most of them.
I’ve found mushrooms growing on top of tree stumps in sunny, bare pastures. I’ve found them under gooseberry bushes in damp shade. I’ve spotted them from horseback along riding and hiking trails and among the dandelions in my back yard. Some, have turned up in ditches along country roads. Others seem to prefer the south side of hills or warm, sheltered spots at the bottoms of sheer cliffs. About the only place that I have consistently NOT found mushrooms is any field or timber that has been occupied by hogs. Hogs like to root around for edibles in the soil and they, like deer and rabbits apparently consider mushrooms to be a big treat, just as we do. Not surprising, I guess, when we consider that pigs are adept at finding truffles, a prized fungus that grows underground.
The dedication to mushroom-hunting seems to be genetic, passed down in families through the generations. Perhaps because it is often a family affair, it’s a pleasurable springtime outing for the whole family, maybe including a picnic lunch or, as it was in my family, a time to gather wild flowers.
I’ve never quite understood why my mother always pretended those excursions were mainly to pick bouquets of Sweet Williams, bluebells, lady slippers, blood-root and violets. I learned, when my own children were young, that they are very good at finding mushrooms – perhaps because youngsters are shorter and closer to the ground and probably have better eyesight than we adults.
Those fresh and tender mushrooms we find during morning hours, become dry and crumbly when they spend too much time in the sun. Sometimes they are clean and need little preparation for cooking; at other times they are infested by ants and other bugs, dirty or sporting rusty-looking spots. It’s always a good idea to split, trim and rinse them quickly with cold water. Severe infestations of tiny insects can be dealt with by soaking the mushrooms briefly in saltwater.
Mushrooms soak up fats and flavor like sponges, and butter and bacon drippings add flavor when sauteing them, with or without first dipping them in beaten egg and rolling in fine cracker crumbs or seasoned flour. A few years ago, I discovered that simply sprinkling them with packaged onion-ring mix adds a nice flavor and a bit of crispness without the doughiness of flour or cracker crumbs.
With an abundance of mushrooms, you may want to preserve some of your harvest for later. I don’t recommend freezing them raw as they become slimy when thawed. I sometimes sauté them in butter or olive oil before freezing for use in recipes, but the best way to keep them seems to be to dry them, My mother simply put the cleaned mushrooms in a pillowcase to keep out bugs and hung it outdoors in the sunshine and spring breezes, shaking them up periodically until they rattled like dry paper. Dried, they could then be stored in a covered container in the cupboard and reconstituted in warm water for use. If you have a dehydrator or air-fryer, you can do that the easy way.