BRAINERD — Move over morels. Step aside chicken of the woods. A different edible mushroom is taking center stage this fall.
At least that’s what happened recently for Bay Lake area resident Sheryl LaFavor. And the stars of the show this year were several giant puffball mushrooms she found on her property — including one that weighed 6 1/4 pounds.
The appearance of the mushrooms — at least in the giant variety, about the size of a football, she said — was a first for LaFavor and her family on their property. There were both white and brown giant puffballs, she said.
“We’ve never noticed them before,” LaFavor said. “I don’t know where the spores may have come from. It was kind of a surprise.”
Previously, she had only found puffball mushrooms about the size of a golf ball.
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“I've never seen these huge ones before,” LaFavor said.
LaFavor is not a novice when it comes to picking mushrooms on her property, but mostly she has found other varieties like chicken of the woods. So when she and her family found the giant puffball mushrooms, they did their homework and learned the white ones are edible.
“We had some that we just fried in oil in a frying pan and it tasted like mild mushrooms,” LaFavor said. “So it was pretty good.”
LaFavor sliced the mushrooms, and compared the meat in them to the consistency of ricotta cheese. What she and her family didn’t eat they packaged up for the freezer.
The brown giant puffballs were left where they were, LaFavor said, because they were so delicate they would fall apart. The white giant puffball mushrooms were delicate, too, she said, and fingerprints were left pretty easy on them.
According to Forest Mushrooms Inc., a St. Joseph, Minnesota-based company that grows and distributes edible specialty mushrooms , giant puffball mushrooms are native to Minnesota and are easy to spot after heavy rains during their autumn growing season.
Kevin Doyle, founder and president of Forest Mushrooms Inc., said there’s not much demand for them at his business but individuals often ask him about them. Forest Mushrooms Inc. has been fielding several calls about them lately, which Doyle chalked up to a dry summer followed by a wet September kicking off the later growing season.
“There's a lot of people who are very enthusiastic about them,” Doyle said.
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A reason giant puffball mushrooms are a favorite among amateur mushroom pickers, Doyle said, is because it’s one of the safest mushrooms growing in the wild.
“There's really nothing else that looks like it, which is not true of most other mushrooms. Most other mushrooms have a dangerous look alike,” Doyle said.
And the size of the giant puffball mushroom can be impressive, Doyle said. He recalled finding one with a friend from Russia that was three times the size of a soccer ball.
It was the size of one of those big, heavy balls that you throw around in phy-ed class. Just gigantic,” he said.
Most important when harvesting giant puffball mushrooms, Doyle said, is to cut away any sign of insect infestation near the base of the mushroom once it’s removed from the ground.
Also important is making sure it is a bit resilient when pressed with a finger, Doyle said, and when cut in half the giant puffball mushroom should be creamy white all the way through. Doyle said people should discard if it has turned brown or yellow inside. The very base of the mushroom where it has contacted the earth is usually cut away and discarded, too, he added.
Doyle said people often cook them up for nostalgic purposes, remembering when their parents used to harvest and eat them. He said popular ways to prepare them include cutting them into 1-inch steaks and grilling them or cubing them up and putting them into a stew. When his kids were young, Doyle said he would cut them like a pizza crust and spread sauces and vegetables on top of them, though they had to be eaten with a knife and fork as they do not crisp up.
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MATT ERICKSON, Editor, may be reached at matt.erickson@brainerddispatch.com or 218-855-5857.
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