How we forage for chanterelles

(plus an important ask for NC readers)

My first time using the musroom knife I got for Christmas from Mamie and Grampa

Frog troublers, this is a post we’ve been waiting to write! After two too-dry seasons (2021 and 2022) and a cool spring this year, it has been rainy and now it’s hot. For forest dwellers like us, that means it’s chanterelle season, baby!

Chanterelles are some of the most delicious mushrooms you can forage to use in soups, on pizzas, and—our favorite—in scrambled eggs on toast. You’ll almost never find them in stores, because they can’t be cultivated. You have to search for these golden prizes, usually deep in the woods and with a lot of patience.

We first foraged chanterelles (by the basketful) in June of 2020, after reading about them in the delightful In Good Heart Farm newsletter written by Patricia Parker. Patricia is super knowledgeable and helpful, and agreed to look at photos to help me determine if I’d found something edible (it was so early in the pandemic that we were basically still in lockdown). Then for the next two summers, we hardly found any. I worried that maybe we’d overforaged, but it’s more likely that the seasons were just too dry to make for a successful fruiting.

The best way to learn to forage anything, but especially mushrooms (which can be toxic, even deadly) is to go out with an experienced forager. The next best thing is to start by reading beginner books, like these:

The good thing about beginner books is they won’t try to teach you about every mushroom, and in general they will steer you to “safe” mushrooms—not just edible, delicious ones, but mushrooms without deadly lookalikes. That’s one of the best things about Mushrooming Without Fear—it focuses on safe mushrooms and the things they have in common.

Chanterelles are relatively safe because their only lookalike is not only not deadly, it doesn’t even look much like a chanterelle. This is a jack-o-lantern mushroom:

It’s not safe or good to eat, but it won’t kill you (the gastrointestinal distress might make you wish it had, so be careful!). The primary thing it has in common with a chanterelle is that it’s a pretty orange color, but even that is somewhat different (I think of chanterelles as being more the color of a deep orange egg yolk, with a tinge of peachiness).

Here’s a useful video about the differences:

Our favorite chanterelles to find, the golden or smooth chanterelle, has some distinctive charactestics that make it a “safe” mushroom to find and forage:

1. First, chanterelles are mycorrhizal and grow out of the ground, not from dead or decaying trees and logs. They usually grow in hardwood forests, near (but not on) oak or hickory trees.

2. Chanterelles grow singly or in small clusters of just a few mushrooms.

3. Chanterelles have what Mushrooming without Fear’s Alexander Schwab calls false gills—this was very helpful for me to learn. Basically, it means that the gills are flattish, thick, and are a part of the stem that can’t be broken off with your finger or a knife. They travel down the stem and are irregular and branching.

4. To me, golden chanterelles have an apricot-like, or sweet smell, though interpretation of smell is different from person to person.

5. The name chanterelle comes from the Greek word kantharos, which means drinking vessel or cup. More mature chanterelles will often look cup-like or vessel like.

Our next-favorite kind of chanterelle is the red, or cinnabar-red chanterelle. These are tiny and orange-red, with similar characteristics of the golden one but with slightly more pronounced gills. They often grow near golden chanterelles, around the same time of year.

After reading a good book (and watching a video or two), if you can’t go foraging with someone more experienced, our biggest suggestion is to find a local-to-you, experienced forager and ask to send them photos or videos of your finds. You can also find Facebook mushroom foraging groups and post your photos there—you’ll get lots of advice and help.

Here are our best tips for finding a time to forage:

Talk to neighbors who also like to forage, and learn when they’re finding the kind of mushrooms you’re looking for. We knew to go foraging last night because our neighbor Jilian texted us about her finds yesterday.

Go right after it rains. Mushrooms love wet weather. You can also go back to the same spots, year after year.

Wear bug spray! We like non-DEET but very effective Picaridin, which repels ticks and chiggers, as well as mosquitos and even no-see-ums. We learned about this spray from our friend Cat, a dog trainer and author who is outside and in woodland areas a LOT.

Bea’s tip: Look on slopes, near creeks, and under hardwood trees. Follow a path if you have one, but look off the path for bright spots of yellowy orange.

Harriet’s tip: Also look on the path, because sometimes mushrooms are on paths. Look underneath the leaves for little ones. If they’re really small, don’t pick them yet.

Richard’s tip: Go with a kid, because they’re closer to the ground.

Belle’s tip: Start to notice other natural clues that will give you an idea of when your favorite mushrooms are about to fruit. For example, we’ve noticed that golden chanterelles often pop up around the same time that the first, small yellow tulip poplar leaves fall to the ground. They also tend to follow the first boletes of the season, at least where we live.

Can you use an app, like Seek, to identify mushrooms?

We tried Seek on the edible mushrooms we found last night (golden and red chanterelles), as well as on the non-edible ones, and it correctly identified all of them. But I wouldn’t go by an app alone—just use it as one of the tools to help you confirm (the first, best tool being an experienced forager).

What do you do with your mushrooms?

Don’t eat wild mushrooms raw—they’re safer, and better tasting, if you cook them first. We like to sauté our mushrooms in butter or olive oil, then add them to scrambled eggs, pizza, toast, or ramen.

How about you, Frog Troublers? Have you ever foraged for wild mushrooms, how did you learn, and what are your favorites? Or are you a chicken of the woods? (Just kidding, it’s important to stay safe if you don’t feel confident!)

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Finally, here’s a big favor: if you live in North Carolina, your public schools just got more at-risk than they already were.

Republicans just sent a hugely dangerous, totally bonkers bill to the Education Committee—as usual, in the dead of night, with no warning. Among other things, it would allow five parents in any district to initate the firing of school superintendents; allow parents to sue school districts for violation of the right to parent (a very vague and confusing category of harm); require school personnel to out trans and nonbinary kids; forbid teaching fourth and fifth graders about gender identity; allow parents to access kids’ library records and restrict the books kids can read and check out; and would give our dangerously unregulated charters even more power to discriminate (no joke, this part of the law was crafted to help charters enforce skirt-wearing on female students).

The best way I know to oppose this bill and its potential impacts, after contacting your legislators, is to build strong coalitions of public school supporters within your county. And the best way I know to do that right now is to complete the free, helpful, solutions-driven Public School Strong Training. This is a joint venture between Heal Together and Down Home, two grassroots groups that support honest, accurate, safe, equitable, and fully-funded public schools. Public School Strong has had great success so far, bringing together groups in 30 NC counties and counting.

I go to a fair amount of Zoom meetings, but I was really impressed by the short (less than one hour total), free Public School Strong training that both Richard and I attended a couple weeks ago. We learned about the different organizations facing down threats to public schools in NC and met other people in our county who can help us stay organized and mobilized. Plus, they sent us each a free T-shirt we can now wear to promote the value of public schools at school board meetings or wherever we go. If it’s not too hot I might wear mine to running club this week!

The next meetings are:

Mon, Jul 31, 7:00pm–8:30pm EDT

Sat, Aug 12, 10:00am–11:30am EDT

Wed, Aug 16, 7:00pm–8:30pm EDT

Tue, Aug 22, 7:00pm–8:30pm EDT

Sat, Aug 26, 10:00am–11:30am EDT

Can you set aside an hour of time go to one of these? I promise you’ll be so glad you did. Then we can wear our T-shirts and be twinsies, as Harriet says. Special challenge, dear to our feminist hearts: forward this request to a dad! Richard says, “it was encouraging to see other people from our county. I’m absolutely glad that I went.”

As a thank you, we promise to post a great roundup of favorite summer books this week!

Do you have questions about Public School Strong or foraging for chanterelles? Have you done Public School Strong training, and if so what did you think? We’d love to hear!