Here is a pretty rare #mushroommonday
Here is the rare find of Entoloma abortivum it is a strange combination of two fungi.
The Entoloma abortivum is parasitizing honey mushrooms making a super edible combo called shrimp of the woods.
Shrimp of the woods is similar to lobster mushrooms in taste, it tastes like shrimp with a mushroom mixed together. Sadly I only found a bit barely enough for a taste. There are areas of the country where this grows in abundance mainly the northeastern states.
Now for a giant. I had my wife hold this giant puffball for scale. This thing is bigger than a soccer ball.
They are fairly light in weight with a foamy texture.
The big ones look like cratered planets.
Here is a medium sized one. I tend to harvest this size and smaller as the texture is less foamy.
Now I found a motherload of perfect sized puffballs for harvest.
Baseball to softball sized puffballs are the best for cooking and texture.
Be sure to brush off all the pillbugs and millipedes.
Now its time to make a few meals out of them. I made lasagne with one. I may try making fries out of another and a soup out of another.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
Bon apetit.
The lasagne I made from the giantbbn puffball was amazing.
How awesome… great finds.
Nice to find rare ones and such a large mushroom too.
Thanks for sharing 😊
Have a wonderful new month and week!
I've been searching for shrimp of the woods for ages and finally found some. Its a bit of a boring looking mushroom but super rare in my area and tasty.
Awesome you did now.
That doesn’t matter… if it is rare and tasty… that’s important 😁
This looks so cool!
Mushroom hunting on the woods! I missed doing that, been ages.
I love the fall season, all sorts of them hatch out here, with quite a few edibles showing up.
I am already drooling 😋 from the meal you are about to make with this mushroom.
I still have three puffballs left, maybe a sort of deep fried puffball cheese stick could work with them. https://foragerchef.com/classic-fried-puffballs/
Nice puffball find 👍 cool to find some to take home. We had some chicken of the woods in a pasta bake earlier this summer. One of my favorite uses for mushrooms.
One word of warning about the giant puffballs are their sort of gamey taste if you don't cook them with a bit of lemon. Tomato sauce also reduces the gamey taste. Chicken of the woods is good in almost any dish so long as you let it kind of shine enough on its own to compete with everything else in the dish.