Morel Mushrooms, Everything You Need to Know

Morel Mushrooms

Spring is my favorite time of the year. Flowers are blooming, animals are coming out, and temperatures are rising. Spring also means it is finally time to go hunt for morels. Morels or Morchella are an edible sac fungi that grow all over the world. Morels are one of the most commonly recognized (and harvested) mushrooms in the world. Their popularity is due entirely to their great taste. Morels have a unique flavor that is commonly likened to meat; roast beef, bacon, and steak being the ones I hear the most often. I think they have a more earthy/mushroomy taste personally. No matter what their flavor resembles most people will agree that morels taste great.

When Should I Start Looking for Morels?

This will vary depending on where you live so there’s no exact date to recommend beginning your search on.  The best time to start looking for morels is when the temperatures start reaching the 60’s with some regularity.  Morels only grow for about 3 weeks in the spring, so you definitely don’t want to miss your chance! Once the temperature is in the right place ideal hunting days are right after a rain and overcast skies. Morels can be easier to find on overcast days because shadows won’t interfere with your searching.

Where Should I look for Morels?

Knowing where morels grow is the ultimate key to finding them.  In general, the best place to search is areas where fields join up with forests and around hardwood deciduous trees. This is the most common place to find morels. Other productive places to search are old apple orchards. Tree species that morels often grow around are Ash, Elm, Poplar, Aspen, and Oak.  Any of these tree species that has fallen in the past few years can be especially productive. Even if all of the conditions are perfect and you’re searching a fallen ash tree on the edge of an orchard, you aren’t guaranteed to find morels. Morels, like most fungi, are fickle and don’t always adhere to the rules we expect them to; meaning that you can find them in all sorts of places you wouldn’t normally expect, even among pine trees.

How Should I Cook Morels?

So you’ve found some morels and you’re ready to cook them. Here’s a list of ingredients you’ll need to get the most flavor from your mushrooms: butter. That’s it. Butter is great for morels because it enhances their flavor without altering/masking it. Some people like to lightly coat their morels in flour and add a little black pepper while the morels are in the saute pan.
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When I cook morels I like to put them in the saute pan by themselves and leave it on low heat for a few minutes. This gives the mushrooms a bit of a head-start on the butter since the butter will brown quicker than the morels will. Once the morels have softened up a bit I add the butter, not a whole lot but enough to coat each mushroom. Let them sit on low-medium heat for around 10 minutes or until they start to brown.

This year I tried out two quick recipes with some of the morels I found. Morel spaghetti with alfredo sauce and Morel ramen. Neither was very fancy and both used very cheap ingredient from the grocery store. With that in mind they were both fantastic. I was worried that if I added morels to these dishes I wouldn’t be able to taste any morel. And while that was true to an extent (more so with the spaghetti) the morels did improve both dishes to a fairly high degree.

Are There Any Morel Look Alikes?

Yes. There are several species of fungi that look similar to morels. The easiest ways to identify a morel are by it’s honeycomb patterned cap and if the cap is attached to the stem. Always take the highest level of caution when eating any wild harvested fungi. Don’t eat anything you aren’t 100% sure of. Have a local expert inspect your finds if you don’t have complete certainty in what you’ve found.

Morel mushrooms are healthy, delicious, and searching for them is a fun thing to do in the spring.  Living off the land a little bit is always a great feeling too.  Good luck searching and share your finds with us in the comments below!