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Mushrooms
Wild and cultivated, from a morel under a dying elm to the white button from a Pennsylvania mushroom house. This section covers what a mushroom actually is and why it cooks like nothing else, a history full of good stories that do not survive the evidence, ten kitchens around the world, Michigan’s seasons and laws, morels, the giant puffball, cooking over a campfire, and preserving a harvest safely. It starts with safety, because wild mushrooms are picked and eaten at the reader’s own risk.
Forage at Your Own Risk Read this first. Nothing here is an identification guide. Who actually dies from mushrooms (confident adults, not children), why feeling better after a bad meal is the danger sign, and why the folk tests and the phone apps both fail. Explore →
What a Mushroom Is Closer to an animal than a plant, walled with the same material as a crab shell, and 92% water. That is why a mushroom will not turn to mush, drinks oil and gives it back, and makes its own vitamin D in the sun. Explore →
The History The ancient sources never name the mushroom that supposedly killed Claudius. Also: the first written record of shiitake farming (1209), the Paris quarries, and the single Pennsylvania mutant behind every white button mushroom. Explore →
Around the World Ten kitchens, ten answers to the same problem. Duxelles, trifolati, Polish marinated mushrooms, a matsutake harvest that fell 99.9%, huitlacoche, and an English ketchup that began without any mushrooms. Explore →
Michigan The law on public land, the certification needed to sell a wild mushroom, the governor's 2017 veto, a season-by-season calendar with the look-alikes that matter, two morel towns, and the state mushroom that never was. Explore →
Morels The knife test that separates a true morel from a false one, why morels are poisonous raw (and killed two people in 2023), a Lansing patent, a Chinese growing boom, and how to cook them. Explore →
The Giant Puffball A soccer ball on the lawn, edible only while it is pure white inside. The one rule, where the famous seven trillion spores figure really comes from, and puffball steaks cooked over a fire on the Maple River. Explore →
Cooking Mushrooms What the tests actually measured. Rinsing buttons is fine but gilled mushrooms soak up water, oil goes in and comes back out, steaming first beats the dry pan, and a mushroom is almost impossible to overcook. Explore →
Over the Fire Mushrooms at camp: managing a wood fire, choosing between grate, griddle, cast iron and foil, why morels must still be cooked through, and a butter-dipped puffball on the grate. Explore →
Preserving Drying, freezing, the one tested pickled-mushroom recipe (two cups of oil, and a boiling-water canner), Italy's botulism warning about mushrooms under oil, and why there is no tested process for canning wild mushrooms. Explore →
Corrections Thirty-one things almost everyone gets wrong about mushrooms, from silver spoons and never washing them to a state mushroom that does not exist, each with the evidence and an honest confidence note. Explore →
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