How To Cook A Pheasant Back Mushroom

Pheasant back mushrooms (Cerioporus squamosus), also commonly known equally Dryad'southward Saddle, are a common edible mushroom that'south easy to identify.  They used to go past the Latin name Polyporus squamosus, so you might find them in old field guides nether that name also.

Pheasant dorsum mushrooms are large speckled chocolate-brown mushrooms, with a pattern on the surface that accordingly plenty resembles the pattern on a pheasant'south dorsum.  The speckles are actually very thin brown scales, and you tin gently separate them from the cap if you're careful.

They're easy to identify and a perfect wild mushroom for beginners since they don't have any look-alikes.

Sometimes they'll go by the name hawks wing mushroom, which again, is because of their feather-like patterning and large size.

They likewise go by the name of "dryad'south saddle" considering they sprout out of copse in a large saddle-shaped shelf, perfect for a wandering dryad (wood nymph) to ride.  The mushrooms get big fast, which makes them easy to spot as the saddles protrude conspicuously in the forest.

The play a trick on is, that the best tasting pheasant back mushrooms are the small, delicate ones.  Once they're gigantic like a saddle, they're tough and unpleasant to eat.  At that stage, they make wonderful mushroom broth, but if you desire to consume the bodily mushrooms you need to observe tiny ones.

As luck would take it, there are often several tiny, immature pheasant dorsum mushrooms growing nether mature saddle-sized ones, and then but flip them over and perhaps yous'll get lucky.  Ideally, they're no more than 2 to 3 inches across when harvested.

Larger specimens have a leathery texture, merely y'all can still use them in mushroom powder or soup stock.  You tin can also cut away most an inch of flesh from their leading edge, and that role will yet be tender.

Where to find Pheasant Back Mushrooms

Pheasant back mushrooms, similar chicken of the woods mushrooms, are prolific decomposers and they'll sprout in the same spot year after yr.  Once you've found a log that produces pheasant backs, you lot'll exist able to come every year.

More often than not, they produce in the spring months, a few weeks after morels.  Here in Vermont, that's usually the first week of June, only in more reasonable climates it'south late April and May.

We besides oftentimes become a flush in the Autumn months, and then I check my spots twice a year.  Oftentimes enough I'll meet them quondam in September too.  In warm locations, they'll sometimes fruit as a winter mushroom too.

Wait for them on dead and dying trees, particularly elm merely often other hardwood species besides, including oak, ash, and maple.  They will grow on living trees every bit a parasite, breaking downward the heartwood and somewhen killing the tree.  More often though, I find them on dead and downed copse as a decomposer.

Stately elms were one time a common park and roadside tree, simply they've been killed off past a number of diseases in the past few decades.

I have a detail elm that I watch each spring.  Information technology'due south downed by the side of a backcountry dirt road that I oft travel, and I can "drive-by forage" with my eyes to encounter when the pheasant back's are ready.

When this log in brilliant sunlight fruits and is large enough to see driving by, it'south too far gone to harvest.  That's not the point.  Correct by a dusty dirt road isn't the best identify to forage anyway…but information technology does tell me when to bank check my woodland spots.

This log heats up quicker in the spring than other locations, and when the pheasant backs are big on it, they're just about the right size in shady woodland spots (or at the edges of cool parkland spaces).

My indicator log, lying expressionless along a backcountry route in Vermont. When these pheasant backs are big in full sun, so I know it's the perfect time to harvest smaller tender pheasant backs in shady spots.

Identifying Pheasant Dorsum Mushrooms

In one case you lot think you've found a dryad's saddle, identification is pretty uncomplicated.

Outset, you lot want to look for the distinctive pheasant blueprint on the peak.  That'south probably what drew yous to the mushroom in the first identify.

Brand sure it has a unmarried attachment point to the log, usually a thick round single stem where it sprouts from the forest.  Dissimilar chicken of the forest which grows as a fringe, pheasant backs come out with a stem.

Flip the mushroom over, and you'll notice honeycomb-shaped pores.  When the mushrooms are older, the pores are quite deep and really distinct.

That's when it's easiest to see their shape, which isn't quite exactly like the regimented honeycomb in a beehive.  It's a bit more free form, and the honeycomb shapes are a bit irregular.

Still, information technology kind of reminds y'all of honeycomb.

On younger pheasant backs, it's a fleck harder to see.

The pore surface is just starting to develop, and the honeycomb is quite modest and not very deep.  Information technology almost looks like irregular pinpricks, but if you lot look closely the holes aren't round.

They won't be very deep at this point, less than 1mm.  Afterward they'll be up to ii- iii mm deep as the mushroom grows.

The spore print from damsel's saddle is white, though it'south usually non necessary for identification since it doesn't actually have any close look-alikes.

If you've got a dappled, pheasant-colored cap with a honeycomb surface underneath, yous've got a pheasant back.  Unproblematic as that.

Beyond that, the olfactory property is a dead giveaway.

While most mushrooms scent like, well, mushrooms, these have a vivid, virtually citrus-y cucumber scent.  Some people compare its aroma to freshly cut watermelon rind.  Not the fruit, only the fresh aromatic green odor of the rind.

I know, hard to believe, and often the smell isn't all that potent in older specimens or intact mushrooms that haven't been cut.  Cut ane though, and you'll smell the cucumber.

Harvesting Pheasant Back Mushrooms

Harvesting is pretty elementary, merely attain in and gently break the mushroom off of the deadwood.  It should come up away easily, as my 4-year-old demonstrates below.

You lot shouldn't need a pocketknife or any other harvesting tools, merely you tin use one if that'due south your preference.  The stem usually isn't consumed, information technology's only used in stocks because it'due south quite tough, even in immature pheasant backs.

Experience costless to cutting information technology off in the field, or bring it habitation equally I practise for other uses.

My girl harvesting a medium sized pheasant dorsum mushroom off the stump of a downed tree.

How to Cook Pheasant Back Mushrooms

Young pheasant backs tin exist dusted clean, sliced, and sauteed in butter or oil.  They have a distinctive, nigh acidic flavor that to me tastes like they've been splashed with vinegar already.

Add in their cucumber-similar aroma, and I think they do peculiarly well in pasta dishes.  They're likewise good in common cold (but cooked) salads, like couscous salad or pasta salad.  They add a effulgence to the mix, merely also the savory umami of any mushroom.

Personally, I recollect they're great with minimal preparation.  Some people, even so, think the pore surface has an awkward texture once cooked.  Information technology can be peeled off if you prefer, and one time you get started information technology'll skin away like an orangish peel (or the peel of a puffball mushroom).

You can too use a sharp knife to strip away the pore surface.  (Or merely go out it on, as I do.)

Some people really similar to just pare pheasant backs birthday, removing both the dappled pheasant cap surface and the pore surface.

That's actually pretty easy to do, provided you cut the mushroom first.

Simply slice them, and then y'all tin can peel away the peak surface and the poor surface, equally they are distinct layers.  (Again, I don't do this, I eat them whole as is, sliced and cooked.  This is a affair of personal preference, and some merely don't like the texture of the surface layers.)

Once sliced and sauteed, you lot can utilise pheasant back mushrooms anywhere you lot'd use sauteed mushrooms.  Since I think they taste a bit acidic, every bit if they've already been lightly tossed in vinegar, I think they do especially well with cooked greens.

Concluding season I paired them with wild asparagus, hosta greens, dandelion greens, and some edible flowers from my yard.  It fabricated for a truly spectacular wild foraged luncheon with piffling more than butter and wild vegetables/mushrooms.

Sauteed pheasant dorsum mushrooms on a bed of hosta greens with wild asparagus, dandelions, and lilacs.

Larger pheasant back mushrooms tend to exist tough, and don't taste nearly as good equally smaller ones.

If you only find big ones, the best way to utilise them is in a mushroom stock.  But simmer them in a fleck of water until you've extracted their color and flavor, then strain and cook with the goop as you otherwise would use broth.

More the recipe following sort?  Here's a recipe for pheasant dorsum stock.

making broth with pheasant back mushrooms

Pheasant Dorsum Mushroom Recipes

Beyond a simple sautee, or mushroom broth with the larger ones, I've also institute a number of recipes using dryad'southward saddle if y'all're feeling adventurous:

• Pheasant Back Mushroom Burgers
• Tempura Fried Pheasant Back Mushrooms
• Stinging Nettle and Pheasant Back Palak Paneer
• Dryad's Saddle Pickled Mushrooms with Jalapeno and Dill

At this point, I don't know of anywhere that sells pheasant back mushrooms commercially.  You might get lucky and detect them at your local farmer'south market, equally I sometimes practice.  They're frequently just coming in at the tail end of Morel season here locally.

Mushroom Foraging Guides

Looking for more mushroom foraging guides?

• Morel Mushrooms
• Puffball Mushrooms
• Chanterelle Mushrooms
• Shaggy Mane Mushrooms
• Lion's Mane Mushrooms

Source: https://practicalselfreliance.com/pheasant-back-mushrooms/

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