Brad Forages for Porcini Mushrooms | It's Alive | Bon Appétit

Hey guys, he's

alive

today, we're here in Washington, the state, and today we're going to look for some

mushrooms

. My mushroom friends have joined me, the wonderful Colin and Andrew, and we're going for the big time. lifting

porcini

mushrooms

this isn't something you should just jump in to look for some mushrooms in the woods and just pop them in your mouth, you can get very sick and possibly even die so please do your research, make some friends, let's have some fun Vinnie at the mushroom fields Vinnie will be like this Oh, today just to live we are looking for high altitude

porcini

that is a mushroom, come in here Oh, okay, come in here Andrew, the boys think we found the right one, oh yes, poor thing, it looks like it is good.

So logos, we'll try to ask you out a little bit, then we'll just do a little rock move. Oh, deep, Oh, no, almost, yes, this one looks like it was nice and it was under the room attached to the root, yes, yes. so you can see how much meat was left on the bottom, so it can still be recovered, yes, now you notice that in some mushrooms they have like those striations, what are we? Gill, no, I noticed that boletus don't, yes, the bottom of Bunji, small sized spongy tubes, there are like millions of little ones. little tubes where the spores will come out of the cap and fall through those little little tubes the mushroom we're harvesting is just that's not quite right, right, oh yeah, that's just the fruit, the rest of the organism is underground helium, so this is like the flower of the plant, just the fruit, but it's so essentially, this is the fungus trying to reproduce exactly, okay, yes, the spores, the spores are like seeds, they're tiny, they fall and they're so light that they just fly everywhere around us, we are breathing them right now, that is how they reproduce in a place much more distant than the mycelium that will grow below.

Explain to us what the duct is, the Duff is the layer of forest floor between the soil and the surface, so it's just a little bit of exactly pre-decomposition stuff, yeah, yeah, for things that everyone knows, and fungi, the mycelium, are the main decomposer among the living, the trees, they drop their needles and fall to the ground before they become nutrients that the trees can recover, they are consumed mainly by the mycelium of the fungi and the mycelium which is the network underground, yeah, look, you should be able to see on the path here where it connected to the mycelium.

I just can. I can't get over the smell, I mean, it's a little earthy and mushroomy, but it's also like a little dry aged beef, ewwww, right, it has a nutty flavor and they could do it in the best possible way, yeah, now Where would you cut it? You'd probably like to cut that kind of place that's not more gnarly and get a nice clean base. Oh yes, mushrooms are amazing. Beliefs tend to be one of the safest groups of mushrooms to eat, but yes, it is very true. You want to know what you want. are looking for, you want to have completely 100% sure identification that you are eating what you think you are eating and it is a good idea to go with someone who knows beforehand and knows exactly what mushroom you are eating.

I'm glad you're here come on, although I'm a completely self-taught forager and I've never had anyone more experienced than me, but the scariest, yes, the one that took me the longest to get comfortable with was the matsutake, there's a pair. Is an avocado pit about foraging? Yeah, yeah, oh man, orange peels of the world. Get closer to this one. Oh, that's good about this. If the Wilson green cap the Wilson green cap is very poisonous, known for its bounce, it does not have a great spongy texture that bounces. harmless, pretty funny actually, hey

brad

, i got another one, come check it out.

Oh, big, big boy, so this is a little bit beyond where you want to find it. Would you like to eat it? No, it's slimy, it's unpleasant, it's soft, what does it do well? I'll see here very quickly that the worms love them. Oh, the worms, the squirrels love them. Oh, look at that funk. Now this is definitely way beyond where I would like to eat it. There are worms, but a little bit of worms, right? It doesn't really bother me oh yeah but the other thing is with the more mature ones like this you can just dry them off the worms just come out that's a good point and sometimes the sponge is the only thing that has worms on it and you can suck , you can save the rest or maybe you can just save the broth, but this is already done, yes, it's fried, well, here we are back, let the squirrels and worms eat it, here we go, oh, you have one . there too Oh Andrea, how cute you have, oh, that's what we like, it's a cute little pig, let's throw it in the basket, oh, you have chanterelles, Oh, oh, wow, a small group of them, you can throw those species of chanterelles, golden chanterelles, give that thing away. the apricot, oh I get it, they are so beautiful, yes my friends they get really spicy, oh and this requires a little patch which is a bit nice, yes it's great fruiting, you can see the variety of ages here from full size to You know, these things are like you just take them out, like this guy comes back in two weeks and then you'll have that exact thing, yeah, look here, some that probably rotted, you're not interested, you know, we see the cycle. complete, you know, that's how it is.

I realize I'm being nice, you know it looks like you're going to have to get one, but I know you guys have these really cool little baskets. Do you know? Is there a reason why you guys carry baskets compared to the ones I mean other than it's super cute and it's all beneficial to put your mushrooms or whatever you're harvesting in there completely compared to a plastic bag. You've certainly seen people use plastic bags or paper bags, but the idea with the basket is that you're dropping spores. on the way Oh, some Johnny Appleseed, there you go exactly, keep your eyes open for mini shrimp oh, I wish you could smell that.

I wish they could smell this whole area so quiet in the air, oh mom, my favorite artist, you asked Vince, you know? I've been saying this for decades, my favorite artist, mother nature, yes good luck, you paint, you sculpt, you make, you can, she has your rhythm every time you know it and just like a good Matisse painting, it should be respected enough. I like it. that hope Matt don't cut that probably okay motherfucker I don't think that's polite Vinny look at this I mean this is like he's standing on a pile of rotten wood chips you know he's really focusing on what these creatures are doing like that I don't know I don't know where our mushroom friends went you know they weren't lost in the forest we stayed here to experiment I don't know what kind of mushroom this is oh no Look, look, we learned Vinny, come on, come in here, but now, How do we know Vincent that this isn't a porcini?

Right, you did it, Vince, look, so they have gills instead of fluffy spore droppers, so this is it. no, this is not a boletus, this friend, this, my friends, is not a tall boletus, it's probably poisonous as hell, okay. Oh, Vinnie, a little treat for you, little blueberry, oh what a teasing little tart, sweet like us. Vinnie, you know, so I have to do it. I'll tell you if bringing me back to our camping days feels good to be back in the woods. You know, it really brings you back to your food and I think our friends are like that.

Enough talk, come on. Where is? He is like I use like. a grizzly bear we have to get out of this ticket Minnie oh what a nice field oh there's the thing it ate the wrong mushroom everything is very green Oh wood - I think that's messy I think they could be good to go well oh you're just making them a both once with the double fist itself, that's beautiful as a cousin, these will be gray, David's number one, excellent, number one, number one that you sell when you sell them commercially, there are one to five, they would actually be Number two, not too bad, but it's soft but it's very soft, you can tell it's falling off the seats, falling apart, it's saturated, that would be one.

I would probably take it home, dry it and powder it, really yes, because the texture doesn't matter, the flavor is still there, the flavor. not necessarily, yes, exactly. Oh, the little shrimp represent a mushroom-shaped protuberance, so look, this is cool, good eye Brad, let me let me take off a little bit of the Duff, so yeah, when you go to pick them up, as we learned, you're going to want to dig a little around. a little bit just to expose the big gnarly stem because the stem is not trash so you want the oats to be soft.

Oh what a shame, and would you shake it, this is a little rotten at the bottom, that's a shame. Oh, we tried, you know, we're not even going to do it. Be perfect, especially when searching for food. I'm glad I found some things. No, I, Bandung, but I'm starving. Say let's go back. We'll light a small fire. Good. We have a lot of mushrooms. I know our friends bought mushrooms. some really cool stuff where I think we're making some mushroom fried rice so let's light the fire we're going to see our reward so we just picked these mushrooms and then what, just so you know, I mean, they grow in the soil with which they are covered.

Dirt Duff, if you want to clean them, is there anything you need to do to them? I always like to try to save as many mushrooms as possible, so I basically start carving them, it's inevitable that you're I'm going to eat some Duff surehand or bugs when you eat wild mushrooms they're smaller than quartz right, so, yeah, we just went out, we got all our mushrooms, we brought them here, we cleaned them, Andrew brought some peace and quiet, tell us. What are we? We would have been cooking here. Yeah, we're just going to do like wild mushroom fried rice to give the mushrooms a little bit of color.

We will sauté a little onion and pepper. Some sausage. We'll finish it off with the garlic and the coriander root, we'll do some egg and then we'll finish it off with some Collins chili sauce, it wasn't good here Vince porcini first, yeah, what the hell are you thinking about that so much? other mushrooms but the stems are amazing mm-hmm not bad, not bad at all, you know it's good and no one talks Vince, it's almost like cedar e to me a little bit yeah, I can understand it's funny, you say cedar e because we mention it when we were looking for, they tend to grow in coniferous forests like pine forests, you know, I wonder if they are a product of their environmental environment, yeah, like most, sure, okay, ready, put the camera down, buddy, get in here and eat , Alright. guys, thanks for joining, it was so much fun being out there, you know, learning in the woods and then coming back and cooking, which would be, guys, it really doesn't get any better than that.

I don't know if you guys go out there. Please be careful, you know that portuguese and chanterelles are quite safe and pretty, you know that quite easily, but there are many species out there. Make friends, form a community, go out collecting with people who know what they are doing. and pass on the knowledge and be careful, you know, if you're not sure, don't eat it, I hope you have fun, let me know things you like to do with mushrooms or some other interesting species that you like to eat or We would love to know where you get them from you take out, let us know in the comments.

Many thanks to Colin and Andrew for taking their time and sharing their place with me. I won't share it if you can figure out where this is. the hat, guys, but cats out of the hat is that there are no cats out of the bag, why was the cat in the bag okay? Anyway, thanks guys. Bon appetit, oh, look at this, come on, boy, look at these things, hey, look at this place, how cold it is! water, oh my god, it's hotter than air, Vince, you gotta feel that, come here, put the camera down, let's go swimming, oh, we ran into a couple of those mushrooms from Alice in Wonderland, highly psychedelic, making your stomach feel a little funny. go nibble on those maybe it wasn't anything from that mountain oh, we won't tell anyone it's ours.

I feel like who the lady was, you know, there's an old children's song about the river and through the woods that had about Goldilocks, right? Goldilocks. She had a red shirt and then the wolf ate her ass or something. Oh, what's that story like? What is David? Oh I gotta tell you bro I record this time we get out of this woods we get back on the bikes bro it's time to hit the road ask baby weed