Prairie Sportsman

- [Nicole Zempel] And we're sitting here looking at a very pretty fruiting of Chicken of the Woods.

A super common mushroom, very easy to to identify.

So if you're a beginner, it's it's a fantastic mushroom to kind of invite you into the the world of mycelium and fruiting bodies of mushrooms.

The way that you can tell what you're looking at first of all it's bright, easily spotted from quite a distance, but also you have I'm just gonna take a little bit of one of the pieces here.

So you have the top, it's, it's a polypore fungus and so if you see here there's little teeny tiny pores so it's a very porous surface underneath and a bright yellow color.

And then on the top it's a really pretty kind of a tangerine orange shading.

So this is Chicken of the Woods and it gets its name because yes it does taste a little bit like chicken but also texturally kind of resembles chicken a little bit.

But if you slice this up thin and you fry it up in a little butter and garlic, it is magnificent.

So you can spot chicken in the woods can be early spring to late fall and once you do spot 'em check back again the following season because they do tend to grow back in the same area.

Also, when I do harvest, I always leave a little bit because all that mycelium that you know produces the fruiting body is just under the, the surface of the wood.

So I always leave a little bit on the substrate.

Also, these are saprobic mushrooms so they do like to feed on decomposing logs or dying trees.

If you see it on a living tree life is not long for that tree.

Then it would be a parasitic fungus eating the the nutrients from the living tree.

But typically they are safrobes feeding on decomposing trees.

And another great thing about Chicken of the Woods mushrooms, they're not a very buggy mushroom.

So really if you just brush you have a brush and you can just kind of brush off any debris that's on there, but you're not gonna find like the inside filled with all kinds of bugs.

Which brings me to the next point.

You don't need to rinse these off underwater because it will become soggy and will absorb all of that water.

If I was gonna cook this tonight, which I probably will I am gonna go home and I'm just simply gonna brush it off slice it up and fry it up.