Purchasing cultivated foods from local farmers, directly from farm produce box services, farmer’s markets, or family farm websites such as Pebble Creek’s helps customers feel connected to their communities and food in a way that nourishes body and mind. People understand the local and global health benefits of spending where they know their money is contributing towards sustainability in farming practices. There is peace of mind in knowing that your money supports ethical business and farming.
Some Mushrooms Must Be Foraged
Finding mushroom farmers who practice their craft lovingly and provide their customers with beautiful products is essential for any professional or household kitchen looking for wholesome ingredients. A good ingredient will produce a great finished product. There are a lot of healthy, delicious, and exotic farmed mushrooms available through the online market, such as the wide variety of oyster mushrooms or lion’s mane mushrooms offered from Pebble Creek. These mushroom varieties are flexible about their growth conditions and do well in cultivation scenarios—but the same cannot be said about all of our favorite mushrooms. Some mushrooms must be obtained via mushroom foraging.
Favorite Mushrooms That You May Not Have Known Were Wild Foraged
Chanterelles are a popular mushroom with a delicate flavor, bright yellow color, and unique trumpet shape. They are well loved and taste amazing fried with butter and shallots, but they are difficult to farm. Chanterelles have symbiotic relationships with specific types of trees, and those who wish to grow them must first find an appropriate forested area in which to do so. This does not lend itself to easy cultivation. Therefore, one of the best ways to acquire chanterelle mushrooms is through mushroom foraging or engaging an experienced mushroom forager directly or through a third party.
Several other popular mushrooms are not easily cultivated and require someone experienced at foraging for mushrooms:
- Morels
- Porcini
- Lobster Mushrooms
These popular mushrooms often show up on restaurant menus during their seasons, in preserved or dried forms, or fresh in season in higher-end grocery stores. It’s all thanks to mushroom foragers that we have access to these flavor-filled powerhouses.
Fun Forager Fact: Beginner mushroom foragers are often told to look for chanterelles and morel mushrooms as they are easily distinguishable, and look-alikes are easy to tell apart.
Using Foraged Mushrooms
Foraged Mushrooms In The Commercial Kitchen
Even though it’s been around for some time, farm-to-table practice had a considerable trend in the 2010s, and is still going strong. Modern chefs know that their patrons pay attention to where and how their food came to be in front of them, making foraged mushrooms a great addition to an attentive chef’s menu.
These days, it’s not uncommon for professional chefs to have herb gardens or to nurture relationships with farmers directly. These relationships are happening between ethical foragers and chefs now as well.
Foraged mushrooms have a lot to offer in terms of flavor. Chefs recognize that foraged mushrooms add seasonal authenticity to their creations—the wild foraged mushrooms are featured on a plate, sauteed or roasted, covered in a layer of thyme cream sauce on a bed of fresh pasta.
The addition of a morel to such a dish adds an earthy umami flavor that is incomparable and reminds you that the leaves are turning, and it’s harvest time. Building dishes around a special ingredient becomes a celebration of where our food has come from.
Customers going to smaller bistros or more refined restaurants want to be offered foods that they may not be able to find in a traditional grocery store or restaurant, and they don’t want to be served meals that they could easily have prepared for themselves. Having close connections to foragers allows a chef, with licence to build their menu, to show off their ability to create not just an amazing meal but an experience.
Mushroom Foraging for Home Chefs
People are returning to the kitchen, wanting to exercise their creativity while creating delicious meals for friends and family. They’re also becoming more curious about their food and how they can participate in the creation from the soil up. Gardening, composting, and, of course, mushroom foraging are all hobbies that are appealing.
Mushroom foraging has a lot to offer those who put the work in, from getting outside to learning about mushrooms, to entering foraging communities, and then yes, finding delicious ways to use foraged mushrooms in the kitchen.
The home chef who made kimchi out of the cabbage that they grew will undoubtedly be interested in sustainably procuring, via foraging, more of their daily produce. For the home chef, foraging and using foraged food often becomes a lifestyle—a lifestyle that encourages going outside, connecting with the environment, and spending time with the community.
The Health Benefits of Mushroom Foraging
The mushroom’s popularity as both a food and a medicine has made mushroom foraging a long-standing tradition all over the globe and has turned the foraged mushroom into an icon for wellness. While we’re not going to go into the practice of using specific medicinal mushrooms, there are undeniable nutritional health benefits to eating foraged mushrooms.
The Nutritional Benefits of Foraged Mushrooms
Mushrooms are a wonderful addition to any diet. They offer fiber, important vitamins like vitamin D and the B vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. Some claim that foraged mushrooms are more nutritious than cultivated mushrooms, but this has not been appropriately studied, and therefore, there is no definitive answer. However, not all mushrooms are the same in nutritional content. Some foraged mushrooms, depending on the variety, may have a certain something not found in varieties of mushrooms that can be cultivated.
Environmental Sustainability is Health Conscious
Health benefits are more than what we consume, and it can be about how we consume and the effect on the health of the planet we live on. Mushroom foraging has sustainability baked into the practice if done under the guidance of most communities, and foraging for mushrooms is highly sustainable if approached correctly. All this can leave you, the individual who eats the foraged mushrooms, with more peace of mind.
How Mushroom Foragers Encourage Sustainability
If you are part of outdoor groups, you’ll know the adages “Take only what you need” and “Leave no trace.” This is common vernacular amongst those who go foraging for mushrooms as well. It is important to only take what one needs so that the mushrooms in a given place can continue to populate, fulfill their environmental purpose, and be available for others who may need and want them, and so that there will be mushrooms for many seasons. That’s sustainability in a nutshell, isn’t it?
Sustainability Is Trending In Foodie Circles
Understanding where our food comes from is incredibly important. Where possible, many individuals are pulling away from industrially farmed foods and are trying to take a more active approach in understanding where and how their food is produced. We’ve relied on mushroom foragers for decades, nay, centuries, to find us our porcinis and morels, our chanterelles and mayatakis, and it’s worth shining a light on the work that they do.
It’s no wonder, then, that environmentally conscious restaurants are taking advantage of the skills and knowledge of mushroom foragers to find these delicacies. It is also no wonder that home chefs are strapping on their hiking boots and connecting with a practice that has the potential to be nourishing in more ways than one.
Whether you’re a restaurant or a Chef looking for high-quality ingredients, Pebble Creek Produce offers fresh, sustainably grown wild foraged mushrooms.
Elevate your mushroom experience and CONTACT Pebble Creek Produce today!
