In the Kitchen
Morel Mushrooms:
To clean, or not to clean...

Often, morels can be picked clean by cutting the caps off above the dirty portion of the stalk. If the morels are emerging from the ground through a layer of pine or fir needles they will be clean, and will not need further cleaning back in the kitchen. Sometimes, however, field conditions produce morels with dirt or sand lodged in the pits of the cap. This can also be the case with purchased dried morels. To determine if the morels are dirty, submerge a sample amount in a bowl of fresh water and swirl them about. Remove the morels from the bowl and allow the water to settle. Then feel the sediment at the bottom of the bowl with your fingertip. If it is gritty, the morels will need to be cleaned. If the sediment is soft, it is not of concern.

If you are using dried morels, you can do the same test by feeling the sediment at the bottom of the water in which you have rehydrated the mushrooms. If they are dirty, either fresh or dried, the only thing to do is submerge them repeatedly in basins of cool, clear water and rinse until there is no gritty or sandy sediment at the bottom of the settled rinse water. After the morels are rinsed clean, put them in a salad spinner and spin all the excess water away. If you don’t have a spinner, put them in a colander with some kind of cover, such as a dinner plate, and shake it around rapidly by hand.

Cooking with morels:

I have eaten morels when they were a complete failure, usually in a restaurant when the chef overwhelmed the taste with some strong ingredient such as port, sherry or anise. Avoid using ingredients with extreme dominating flavors, especially when cooking with fresh morels.

Morels should always be thoroughly cooked, and sometimes this takes longer than one would expect. Cooked morels should be tender, not rubbery or chewy. Undercooked morels are notorious for causing upset stomachs.
             
If you are cooking morels that are on the small side, such as thumb size, they can be cooked whole. Larger morels should be cut into smaller portions, either by slicing in halves or quarters, or by cutting horizontally, which produces a nice ring shape. The smaller the size of the pieces, the more quickly they will cook.

There are a several tricks one can use to bring out the flavor of the morels. Morels love dairy products, so sautéing in butter, adding cream, sour cream and Parmesan cheese are all good techniques to employ. A judicious amount of tamari (or soy sauce), along with good salt, will also help enhance the flavor of morels. Marsala and Madiera, again in judicious quantities, are also good additives. Additional accent ingredients that go well with morels include garlic, caramelized onions, shallots, leeks and ramps. Other agreeable accompanying items include asparagus, fresh corn, potatoes and smoked foods, such as salmon or smoked cheeses.

Morels with caramelized onions in cream sauce (see recipe), are superb served over grilled wild salmon. Large morels, when available fresh, are excellent for stuffing with cheeses or other ingredients. I also recommend grilling fresh morels over good mountain wood or mesquite coals (preferably not just commercial charcoal). A trace of rich, woodsy smoke is a wonderful complement to their flavor. Eggs are great medium to carry the flavor of morels. Just sauté the mushrooms in butter and garlic until tender, add a touch of grated Parmesan cheese, and scramble eggs over them. A breakfast fit for royalty!

Fresh versus dry:

I have heard of people who will dry all the morels they collect, not “bothering” to eat any fresh because they think that the flavor is so superior when dried. I am not a member of this camp. I think morels have an excellent flavor when fresh, as well as a certain very enjoyable mouth succulence that is lost when using them dried. However, the flavor of the fresh is subtler than those that have been dried, and one must take care not to bury it with other ingredients.

             
If you are fortunate enough to have an abundance of morels, the best way to preserve them is to dry them thoroughly. If possible, use a food dehydrator set on the lowest temperature. Drying time in the oven varies with size, but 24–36 hours is usually sufficient. Since morels are hollow, they can also be dried successfully a couple of other ways. Try placing them on cookie sheets in a gas range that uses a pilot light and leaving the door cracked few inches for circulation. Or string them with a needle and thread, and hang them in a warm, dry place until they are cracker-crisp. Drying with the stringing method can be several days to a week, depending upon warmth, dryness, and air circulation of the area, and size of the mushrooms. Once they are thoroughly dried, morels should be stored in glass jars with a tight lid. They will keep well for a couple of years, after which they begin to get a little acrid. They can also be sautéed and frozen.

 
Dry morels must be rehydrated before cooking. The quickest method is to pour freshly boiled water over them and let soak for about 10 minutes. Use just enough water to cover them, since you want to use the soaking liquid in your dish (precious flavor and nutrients end up in there), and if you rehydrate with too much water, some may go to waste. Stir the morels several times while they are soaking. After they have rehydrated, transfer to another bowl and let the water settle. Then carefully pour off and reserve the liquid, discarding the sediment at the bottom of the bowl.  Morels can also be rehydrated by soaking in water overnight. Some people like to rehydrate in cream or white wine, which is of course then used in the dish being prepared.
           

Columns to Savor
Charmoon Richardson

Blackness in the Forest

The Golden Chanterelle

Mushroom Expert

Charmoon Richardson

Morel Mushrooms

Morels are my favorite mushroom for several reasons. Of course, the flavor is superb. More than one person has said to me, after eating an especially good batch of morels that I have prepared, “that was the best thing that I have ever tasted.” Morels are excellent both fresh and dried, and can be prepared in many delicious ways.

Morels are also one of the most enjoyable mushrooms to hunt. In fact, morels are what first inspired me to learn about wild mushrooms. The morel, I’d read as a teenager, has a rare and marvelous flavor, is very difficult to find, and is highly prized. So highly prized, in fact, that very few people will take you to their morel patches. You might find someone who will show you a chanterelle patch, or take you to their oyster mushroom log, but morels are in another category.

There are several reasons for this. First of all, the fruiting season is fleeting— usually only three to four weeks around May (although this timing varies by region, and with favorable weather, the season can be extended somewhat). Besides their brief fruiting period, morels are masters of camouflage, making them difficult to hunt.

Once discovered in their hiding places, morels have a distinctive look that often seems very strange to mushroom novices. They have a generally conical cap, pitted and ridged all over the surface. Their height can range from an inch to a foot or more, although giant morels are rare. Most are between two and five inches. There are several major species found in this country, along with a confusing array of subspecies, variants and hybrids, each distinct in its own way.

The morel most commonly found in the mountains of the western states is the black morel (Morchella conica ). Despite its name, the black morel is actually more of a tan or dark brown, until the mushroom begins to age, at which point the ridge edges start to blacken. The black morel has several sub-varieties that that differ from the classic ‘pinecone’ shape. Some are especially round and bulbous; others particularly thin and pointy.

Over the years I’ve also collected various morels that can be differentiated by color, including versions with a distinct pinkish cast, a darker, reddish-burgundy (extra-delicious!), and those in shades of grayish-green. Each of these has a distinct flavor. There are also golden morels of various shapes and shades, which, while beautiful to see, and rare to behold, are a bit less robust in flavor than the much more common black morel. There are also white morels found occasionally, as well as the fabled gray morels, and the often huge green morels, which are known for having a convoluted web of stem material growing up into the typically hollow cap. There are also what we call “naturals”— morels that are particularly large and robust, with double-walled stalks. I have no doubt that many other variants, with which I am unfamiliar, exist across the country.
           
Ironically, though morels often seem almost impossible to find, they can actually grow almost anywhere. They can come up unexpectedly in your garden. I have seen them growing from the mortar between bricks in a patio. I’ve heard a report of them appearing in a pile of wet, decomposing sheet rock. They might appear in the dead, undisturbed ashes of a fire pit, or in wood chips laid down for landscaping. Undoubtedly the strangest place I have ever seen a morel growing was in the basement of a friend’s house, where he had lapidary equipment set up for cutting and polishing gemstones. One day, he showed me a morel that was growing on the floor beneath the saws and grinders. It was coming up out of a small, messy pile of accumulated quartz fragments, gemstone grindings and lubricating oil! It did not go into the frying pan.

In the early spring, there are always reports of morels fruiting from wood chips in landscaping. If it’s commercial landscaping around businesses, the area may well be sprayed with herbicides, so you take your chances harvesting at these locations. If possible, it’s best to inquire at the business. Home landscaping is less likely to be sprayed, but unless it’s your home, asking permission and checking for spray history are both prudent suggestions. Growing morels yourself at home is a good trick, and apparently, red fir bark (not redwood bark) works well for this. Spread it during the summer or fall, and the morels, if they cooperate, will appear the following early spring. There are several commercial sources that sell morel “kits” with instructions for creating an outdoor bed to grow your own private patch. While this might work, there are no guaranteed methods for the home cultivation of morels.
           
Back in nature, morels are likely to surprise you when you least expect them—but hide stubbornly when you seek them out.  In the Midwest, where morels are a big attraction in the spring, they grow with dead or dying elm trees. In the mountains of the western states, morels are often found in areas where there was a forest fire the year before. There’s something special about the disturbance caused by fire that the morels really like. The elevation varies with latitude, but in general, the fires of interest take place in the mid-mountain elevations, in the forests of tall trees. On the western side of the central Sierra Nevada, we usually hunt between 4000–6000 feet, sometimes going as high as eight or nine thousand feet, if environmental conditions are appropriate.

Alaska is legendary for vast fires and wonderful morels. When Mt. St. Helens blew her top, the following spring was a morel bonanza on the mountainside. At least, so it appeared. People gathered pickup trucks full, only to discover that the surface pits contained a gritty volcanic ash that was impossible to clean.

The strategies and tactics involved in successfully hunting for morels can be quite elaborate. It’s sometimes said that if you run into a mushroom hunter with morels, and he tells you to go up to the ridge top, that means you should probably go down into the valley. While not everyone sinks to outright deceit, morel hunters will often do what they can to confuse the competition, sometime going so far as to deliberately leave a known picker’s vehicle at a location where there are no morels, in order to throw others off the trail.

For the interested beginner, mushroom clubs are one of the best ways to be initiated into the secrets and etiquette of morel hunting. For novices, of prime importance is learning how to read Forest Service maps (some of the roads can get very gnarly) and how to locate desirable habitat by studying elevation and land orientation. Plus, of course, you must master the basic prerequisites for not getting lost in the woods.
           
The thrill of discovering a large patch of morels is exceeded only by the thrill of finding an entire forest full of the gems. When you get into a serious area, they stretch away as far as the eye can see, in every direction. Squatting down to pick only reveals more. The sense of giddiness is palpable, your heart rate increases, and it’s time to calm down and be sure you are not going to lose your sense of direction and become lost.

The first time two friends and myself found a lot of morels was an unforgettable experience. We’d been up in the Sierra, not far from Lake Tahoe, camping for the weekend with a group organized by David Arora, the well known mushroom authority and author. Although we’d had several groups hunting in different areas for most of the weekend, we’d not done very well, and found just enough for our camp dinners. After we broke camp, a few of our people went out for one more try. As my friends and I drove about looking for a likely place, two members of our group emerged on the side of the road, baskets full of morels. “Go down there!” they said, pointing down a steep hillside. “We’d still be there picking, but we have to get home.”

So down we went, and it was not long before we started to find morels. After a while, they were everywhere. We picked and picked, and there were still more morels stretching out into the forest in every direction. When it began to get dark, we reluctantly headed back to our car. It was heartbreaking to leave, but we had picked about 20 pounds. Ten days later, I returned with one of the friends and we picked another 35! By an experienced commercial picker’s standards, that may not be a lot, but when you are new at the game, it is an amazing bounty.
           
A few years later, I took a group to the Sierra to hunt morels. My buddy and Wild About Mushrooms foray partner David Campbell was with us, and he had come across a controlled burn that no morel hunters had yet discovered. You could see morels from the road, and the hillsides were full of patches and areas thick with the beautiful forms. We spent two days hunting at this spot, and estimated that our group of about 30 collected between 300 and 400 pounds. While most burns produce for only one year, this spot, which we dubbed “Area 51” for the number of the forest service road that went through the locale, did well on the second year, too. I went back again on year three, looking for any lingering strays.  As I looked through the burned forest, I saw in the distance what appeared to be large pine cones standing on end. Now, sometimes a single pinecone will stand on end, looking very much like a morel, but I have never seen groups of pinecones all standing on end together.

I took a close-up look with the monocular that I carry, and couldn’t believe my eyes—it was indeed a colony of huge morels. I found about three dozen of them, each around six or seven inches tall and very fat, with thick, stocky stalks. A normal tall morel may not be that big a deal, but the girth of these was about four times that of regular morels. These were the so-called “natural” morels I’d heard of, but until that moment never actually found. It was incredible, and I wish you could have been there with me. But just don’t ask me to tell you exactly where I found them.

Spring is here, so enjoy one of nature’s greatest gifts—the incredible morel!

Copyright 2008 Charmoon Richardson

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Barbara Admas Beyond Wonderful
by Mushroom Expert
Charmoon Richardson

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