Bushcraft Foraging: Dryads Saddle Mushroom

Description

In this video we look at the Dryads Saddle Mushroom, how to identify it and talk about eating it. Foraging for mushrooms can be dangerous or even deadly so a one hundred percent positive identification is absolutely necessary when dealing with them.

The Dryads Saddle Mushroom unlike some of the most common mushrooms grows through spring into late summer on the sides of Ash trees. It has no direct lookalikes, but MUST be eaten young for the best taste much like many wild foods.

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to another video I've been out in the woods today just having a hike around looking for a type of edible mushroom and although I didn't find the one I was looking for specifically I did find an edible mushroom growing on this dead ash stool here and this is a very common funghi to find at this time of year if you live in various parts of the Northern Hemisphere depending on the type of climate you have you might be in luck to be able to find this certainly if you're in the south of the British Isles you almost certainly find this growing a lot of different species of trees at this time of year sweet chestnut and ash or two of the common ones but predominantly it will grow on hardwoods and this ash stool here is coming to the end of its life as you can see may be sprouting a few shoots but the reality is that it's um it's long gone and the fungi has taken hold as they often do on things that are diseased or dying or dead it's called poly porous Cuomo's or dry add saddle another name for it hasn't back fungus simply because of its appearance and it's really easy to identify but let's have a closer look at it and I can tell you how to pick this one out and I can show you how to actually cook it and eat it as well if we look at this bracket here you can see it's growing out of this dead piece of ash on the ground and it's got a hard Stipe just there which is the stem and the fungus and it's quite brown dark and it's a very easy way of just picking out the Stipe of this particular bracket the rest of it has a fan shape than the patterning on top looks like the feathers of a female pheasant which is where it gets its nickname pheasant back there is nothing that looks like this bracket at any point in the year the only thing you could really mistake it for is PIP tape or a spatula nice perch Polly pool which will not poison you if you eat it in fact some people do eat it even though it's classified as inedible but it won't do you any harm and that's the nice thing about this bracket it's quite safe to eat it's very easy to identify but this one here is definitely not what we want to be going for it's too big its reach maturity it will form a very hard paper like layer on the inside which would be very chewy very unappetizing and it's just too mature you can tell by its size its age it's too mature if we break a piece off as well and we actually have a look you can see it's expanded become very spongy and the paws have all broken apart we get in a bit closer you can see it just that if we ignore some of the larger ones that are around we've got some really good specimens just here we have a look at this one a little bit closer you'll be able to see the difference between this one and the larger one that was all tatted on the ground there you can see that the edge of this one is still intact it's not frayed and split and spongy like the other one and it's still pretty firm you can see it's holding together quite well the pattern on the top really remains consistent depending on the age unless they get really old and they start to just turn into sponge but if we look underneath that's really the key to having a look whether it is at the stage where it's turning or not whether you want to eat it you can see underneath that the pores are starting to open up and that's just really indicating that it's getting to the point that it's really not going to be as as appetizing as we want it to be it is starting to reach a level of maturity or start to harden up inside and it's not going to be particularly tasty but on the edge there the paws are actually still quite tightly knitted together so we could take this one if we didn't find any better specimens or we wanted to add such a quantity and just take the edge off and cook that part but the rest we could eat as well we cook it for a bit longer

you'll probably find that it would actually soften up a little bit and this one is really just on the cutting point it's really on the tipping point of being edible this one here is the best specimen anything of this size will be ideal I usually measure it by my fist and say no bigger than my fist and that's usually the largest size I go up to the last one we had a look at was borderline I probably would take that if I was having a bad days foraging or I was hungry but if I'm just taking them to cook at home as part of a meal I usually just go for the best ones to make the meal as tasty as I can make it this one will be ideal we take a knife just take that off there you can see that underneath the paws are very tightly knitted together the brackets nice and firm and it shouldn't sort of fall apart too easily normally they just split and crack and this one is a is really good so that's ideally what we're looking for as a very earthy smell dry and subtle it's really nice it's almost like like a damp wood really but then I guess that's the sort of smile you would expect for something growing on rotten damp wood but you can see the pattern very easy to identify nothing else really looks like it apart from the other bracket I mentioned peps a porous patchy leanness but then that will only look like it at certain times and any very very slightly only a few were very unexperienced he you really didn't know what you were looking for and had no form of guide on you whatsoever and we're just going by hearsay so if you took some documents right with you or a picture it'd be a very easy day out in the field if you did find it but it makes a fantastic tree it's a very delicious fungus always reminds me of the taste of steak and mushrooms together and it does make a good edible out in the field because it's a substantial size even though its nutritional value may not match its size it's a it's a of a substantial size and can make a very good meal if you're out in the field and you want to do some cooking or you are foraging but I'm going to spend some time here having a look for some more and continue my search today for the mushroom that I am looking for st. George's mushroom yeah we would find at this time of year and if you're interested on how to cook this edible mushroom or any mushroom out in the field which you should really cook to allow your body to digest it properly you should really always cook them it's the best course of action Ross there really is no point eating them in some respects and you can upset your stomach in certain circumstances too so do cook them but you check the description below you'll find the next part of the video which is a video I did some time back on actually foraging for this and cooking them out in the field so thanks again for watching guys I appreciate it and I'll see you very very soon in another video

take care