“Oh hello!”,” So good to see you again!” “I’m so glad you’re here!”, “I’ve been looking all over for you!” These are all things you might expect from a Bob Ross painting episode but they are actually things I say to myself whenever I’m out in the woods looking for morel mushrooms, shed deer antlers and other forest gems.
One of my favorite springtime activities is hunting the delicious morel mushroom, they grow wild throughout the country but are very difficult to cultivate so the best way to get some is to get outside and go find them yourself..unless you want to pay top dollar. Either way there is nothing better to top a big steak or juicy cheeseburger than some fresh morels fried in butter.
When is the best time to get out and look you ask? Well, you can always follow popular web reports but much like fishing reports, by the time you get the word the bite may already be over. Here in west central Minnesota prime time is usually around mother’s day but every year is different depending soil temps and moisture. The simple answer is any time you can get out in the spring, but there are a few signs given to us by nature. Old timers swear that by the time the poplar buds are the size of a squirrel’s ear morels are popping. For us in west central Minnesota the blooming of lilacs, trillium and marsh marigolds are our sign that morels are ready blooming. I have heard that when the air temps are in the 60’s and soil temps are 45 to 50 degrees, the morels are ready. There needs to be sufficient moisture as well, if it’s too dry they won’t pop and if it gets down to freezing at night they won’t really do well either.
As far as location most people are pretty secretive about their morel spots because they grow back year after year and they are so tasty it may not be worth sharing. Areas where trees are dead and dying, the nutrients leech into the soil and activate the mycelium of root system of the morels. Look for dead and dying elm trees, poplar trees. Mycellium lives below the ground and is activated by disturbing the soil so after a fire, or construction or logging can trigger morel growth, I have a patch by my house that grows where beavers are falling poplar trees so I just keep an eye on the beaver activity. Usually the first year after a big burn of a forest fire can yield a bumper crop and it’s easy to find them when all of the other underbrush has been burned off. My last weekend foray ended up with miles of hiking only to find a few beneath the picnic table where we were camped so they can be almost anywhere so keep your eyes open when mowing the lawn.
When you spot the first morel don’t pick it immediately, they usually have friends in the area so look around and see if there are others nearby, sometimes uphill, downhill where water flows down or across hillsides at a certain elevation where the sunlight triggers them. Some people bring a mushroom stick to stir up brush piles or move underbrush. When you do find one to pick I like to pinch it off at the base and throw it in a mesh sack so that the spores mays be spread while I’m walking out of the woods, some people will use a knife to cut them at the base, either way don’t pick a bunch of dirt because you’ll be cleaning them anyways anyway. If you find them too late the bugs and slugs may have taken over and it might not be worth picking them. I try to fill my mesh sack and then rinse them off when I get home and soak them in salt water overnight, this will kill and evict any creepy critters.
After an overnight soak I’ll rinse them off and fry them up in salted butter, they are super tasty at his point but if I have enough to save I’ll measure them out in ½ pound batches and slide them into ziplock bags to freeze for future use. The bags can easily be thawed and reheated in a pan to be put on a burger or steak. I have also separated each morel and placed them on a wax paper sheet to freeze individually, once frozen they can be consolidated and put in a big ziplock fo future use, these can last up to a year in the freezer. Another popular method for preservation involved dehydrating, you can split them and use a commercial dehydrator or put them on a window screen in the sun and dehydrate them. This way they will last for years. I have heard of old timers that run a needle and thread through them and hang them up to dry around the cabin like popcorn on a christmas tree.
As for timing Verpas are the first to sprout and are edible but aren’t actually a true morel. Apps like “picture this” might help you identify morels for picking. Beware of the false morels or brain morels, they have a reddish orange tint and look more like a brain or scrotum than a morel.
To me morels appear fleshy almost like human skin. They have porous caps that connect to the stem and are hollow inside. If you aren’t sure what you are picking make sure to bring them to someone who is so you don’t end up getting sick.
Here in west central we have both black morels and yellow morels, the yellow tend to grow in more sandy areas and blacks grow in darker more moist soil. Some are found in the shade and others are found out in direct sunlight, I think it depends on soil composition and temps.
So I hope this inspires you to get outside on a nice spring day and go looking for tasty little forest gems and if you find yourself talking to them, don’t worry about it, everybody does it. Happy Hunting!
