Oyster Mushrooms

Oyster Mushrooms These easy-to-find mushrooms are delicious to eat!

B Y F R A N K H Y M A N

ysters make a perfect reward for the novice

Oforager: They’re easy to spot and identify, and they taste great, too. You may be able to find cultivated oyster mushrooms at your farmers market and get a good look at them before foraging for wild ones.

When a friend wanted me to teach him to forage, we walked across the road from his property into some woods. Less than 50 feet in, oysters greeted us on a big fallen beech tree. We grabbed double handfuls to bring home and spent more time preparing and eating them than we spent foraging. You may not always find oysters so quickly, but they’re very common in the woods.

Most edible mushrooms grow on the ground, where they may be small, few in number, obscured by leaves and difficult to find. An oyster mushroom, on the other hand, may only be a few inches across, but oysters often grow in clumps the size of a soccer ball. And they’re up off the ground, making them among the easiest mushrooms to find.

Oyster Mushrooms

Pleurotus ostreatus

Meaning of the Latin name: ear on its side, oyster

Also known as: Tree Oyster

FEASTING

This one is gourmet, though unfortunately, oyster mushrooms get their name from their appearance, not their taste or texture. The dense, white flesh has a straightforward mushroom flavor, although some people detect a mild licorice scent on the fresh ones. My wife isn’t fond of the texture of mushrooms generally, but I found a cooking method that had her asking for seconds of oyster mushrooms.

Excerpted from How to Forage for Mushrooms without Dying© by Frank Hyman. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.