Don't get me wrong, I do love morels...but there is something particularly satisfying about the first oyster mushroom find of the year. One good log can overflow your forage basket with delicious, meaty goodness, and once you find one flush it seems you just can't stop finding them in the early summer. Oysters are also really fun to grow (visit www.mushroommountain.com if you'd like more information on that!) and are incredibly versatile mycoremediators.
But this post is in celebration of the wild oyster mushroom: Pleurotus ostreatus
Oyster mushrooms begin their fruiting stage as these adorable little buttons exploding out of dead wood. Look for these after the first good summer rains.
Oysters are a go big or go home sort of mushroom and tend to fruit in gloriously thick meaty clusters. They have a pale flesh (not all white! All white and very very delicate may be the Angel Wing mushroom) that feels damp but firm to the touch. Really the closest texture I have ever felt to oysters is the belly of a dolphin but...that may or may not be helpful to you. My favorite feature is the sweet, spicy, earthy scent these treasures give off. Very much like licorice. If anyone were to capture that scent in a perfume they'd have a customer for life in me! Once you smell it you will definitely remember it!
Here is what you want to see on the underside: pretty, thin, smooth, white gills that run the whole length of the mushroom. Oysters do not really have a stalk or a stem.
It is important to note that when it comes to fungi what you see on the outside is not the whole picture. Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. They exist solely to release the spores of the fungi, they do not assist in the intake of any sort of nutrition. Think of them like apples on an apple tree. Much like picking an apple doesn't hurt the tree, picking the mushroom doesn't hurt the organism doing the actual growing. However if you were to pick all the apples off of a tree and hoard away the seeds that might be a problem for the growth of future generations. With mushrooms we can avoid this problem by carrying them in open weave baskets or mesh bags. This will allow them to disperse their spores to an even wider area than usual as you wander their forest habitat. Baskets are preferable to bags because they will act as armor for your delicate harvest, but I keep a mesh bag in my forage bag for portability when I'm not sure I'll be harvesting mushrooms.
When you get home IMMEDIATELY inspect for these little beetle guys, slugs, and other tiny creatures. Oysters are a source of abundance to many in the forest and their sweet smell attracts all sorts of visitors. You can rinse your oysters but be aware that they become water logged and crumbly very quickly. By water logged I mean you can literally wring them out. Soggy, crumbly mess! I just pick out the creepy crawlies with my fingers. Make sure to check between the gills as well. oysters can be kept for several days in the fridge in a paper bag. I haven't had any sort of luck preserving them so I enjoy them when they are available.
Oysters are an excellent addition to soups and sauces but they really shine in stir fries! They have a mild, sweet flavor but the firm, slightly slimy texture might be off putting to some. It is always very important to cook wild mushroom thoroughly and oysters are no exception to that rule.
There you have it! A crash course on one of the most abundant food sources in the Northwoods. We should be seeing large flushes of these guys throughout the summer but be sure to get there before the hungry bugs do! Or don't and use a nice oyster cluster for photography bait! The fox eats the bird who eats the spider who eats the bug that eats the oyster etc etc. Cue the Circle of Life music...
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