Tips on foraging for mushrooms safely

If you’re interested in learning more about edible wild mushrooms, North American Mycological Association president Bob Fulgency suggests finding a local association chapter and going on a mushroom hunting walk with an expert who can tell you what’s safe and what’s not. He says the rules of mushroom foraging are really simple: “If you don’t know what it is, throw it out. Don’t eat it.”

And, if you’re cooking wild mushrooms you’ve foraged, “never eat more than one kind of wild mushroom at a time, because if you have a reaction, you need to know which kind caused it,” he said.

More on this Story

• Where the ‘good stuff’ grows
• Tip on foraging for mushrooms
• Tips on foraging from Hank Shaw
• Chicken of the Woods Mushrooms

View all Items in this Story

• Delmarva Bouillabaisse

For more information about Washington area mushroom hunting and identification, check out the Mycological Association of Washington, D.C. at mawdc.org.

Two other resources that blogger and cookbook author Hank Shaw recommends:

●MushroomExpert.com, a Web site curated by Michael Kuo, which provides a wealth of identification resources from the world’s foremost wild mushroom experts.

●“Mushrooms Demystified,” a book by David Arora.