I don't know if you're aware but when foraging you should put them in a mesh bag rather than the Tupperware. This is for the mushroom to still be able to spread it's spores as you walk. Love the video!
The main advantage of mesh basket is just to keep the mushrooms aerated so that they don't rot with the moisture. Spores do not matter. The spores are all over the place already and the part we harvest is only the tip of the mycelial network. Furthermore, a lot of the species are harvested before the spores mature.
In central Europe, Slavic specifically, it is very common for people to go in the forests nearby their homes and pick mushrooms. People would get home with huge baskets full of large mushrooms that they would later either cook right away or somehow conserve in jars in brine or dry them. It is almost a national sport for the elderly. Also if you go foraging again, use knife to cut near the shaft. Don't yank it out. It disturbs mycelium and slows down growth.
Not just for the elderly - it's a family activity here in Poland, I was picking mushrooms a kid with my parents and we still do it. Every family has their own favourite "secret" spots where the best ones grow, and so on. If you stick to the few easy to recognize species, you're fine. Those are the species that are really obvious and it would be almost impossible to confuse with anything else here - like porcini.
In the UK it is not a tradition to pick mushrooms, but here in Slovakia and other central european countries almost everyone goes and forages edible mushrooms and is almost like a recreational sport.
In Britain foraging is pretty common in the countryside, not so much in large towns and cities tho. However you do get more people from the cities getting into foraging
Fortunately I had a little bit of start-up help. Experienced people pointed out the Chicken of the Woods to me, and then I started learning about the beginner level mushrooms. Boletes (if it has a dark head it's always safe to eat), Blackening Polypore (not very tasty but a lot of proteins), Oyster mushrooms, Cauliflower... When I found one I would try to identify it with an app (the app sucked though, so I tossed it out after 3 misidentifications) and bring it home and do more research like you. Now I got 2 guides and a ton of knowledge more, and I'm starting to dive into the Russulas. Supposedly very tasty, but also very easy to confuse with inedible or even toxic counterparts. I can't stress how much fun it is to go through the forest and interacting with it instead of just barging through. Also it feels like real life Skyrim when you stand in an area and slowly start seeing more and more Amethyst Deceivers pop up as your eyes adjust.
Thanks for great video with reasoning about foraging mushrooms. In my homeland - central Europe, everbody is used to forage mushrooms. In the woods is located large amount of species, but ordinary people is driven by only one rule - pick only that you know. No need to know them all. In total from all possible edible species people mostly forage only 10% of edible species and still everybody is taking huge baskets of mushrooms every visit of the forests.
Just be cautious about where your book was published. European mushrooms are different to American. Here in Australia the number one cause of mushroom poisoning is misidentification, by experienced foragers, who got their experience from other countries. There are many poisonous lookalikes here that would be "unmistakable" in other countries. Also, I have used those apps here and find the opposite, they are extremely unreliable here.
Yeah but you guys also have like two and a half feet long cockroaches and spiders you have to pick up with both hands...jesus, it's like world 4 on Super Mario 3 🤣
Picking mushrooms is a popular family activity here in Poland. I was picking mushrooms a kid with my parents and we still do it. Every family has their own favourite "secret" spots where the best ones grow, and so on. If you stick to the few easy to recognize species, you're always fine. Those are the species that are really obvious and it would be almost impossible to confuse with anything else here - like porcini.
I am from the Czech republic and mushroom foraging is EXTREMELY popular. Every family does it and has heaps of fun doing it. Not long ago me and my family were able to find over 1.5kg of one specific type of mushroom (I am unsure what as to what it is called in English) and we ate it all within 3 days!
IMO, the easiest way to safely get into foraging mushrooms is chanterelles. I'm specifically talking about Cantharellus cibarius because, at least in Northern Europe, it grows so early (in late July onwards) that not many other mushrooms are yet up. So, it's not hard to identify it. It is delicious, easy to cook and almost never has any maggots or other creeps in it. Also, if you find a good spot you can literally find several kilos of it.
Two? Just Two? You are very courageous! I have 3, admittedly not perfect, apps and one pdf book in my phone + I check them from a few different web pages.
Great video! I've been mushroom foraging lots of time in my home country of Lithuania. I usually look for chanterelles which are delicious when cooked. They easy to spot and there's absolutely loads of them. You can come home with buckets of them if all goes well. I also very rarely found some porcini mushrooms, which are usually always infested by bugs. I've also spotted some dangerous and even deadly mushrooms before such as fly agaric and even green, and grey deathcaps. Happy foraging!
Hey Mike if you find some Saffron Milkcaps fry them on a pan with butter and salt, eat with good bread. My favourite part is just dipping bread in the butter. Its amazing. Real delicacy here in Poland. Foraging mushrooms is so common in Poland that its really strange for me to think people in UK don't do it like us.
What an interesting video! Here in Italy it's pretty common for elderly people to forage mushrooms, because they have a lot of experience and can easily identify them. In Italy the national health care system has centres where you can take your mushrooms and get them checked by experts, if you are not sure whether they are safe to eat.
mushroom picking is a great hobby. i got in to it when i was 15 in north eastern usa. when you get a small harvest and satue them its quite the experience. it also expanded my interest in foraging from berries, roots to wild onions. when you find edibles in the woods theres magic like catching a fish. in my teens we would spend hours in the fields looking for subbs and on a few occasions we got a big harvest to dry and make tea. im glad you are professional with multiple sources and a good book. every mushroom hunter needs a good book that can get dirty.
I've always been fascinated about stenographers in court rooms and how the stenotype machines work and how difficult it would actually be for someone to learn the system they use to transcribe at 360 words per minute in real time! Would be interesting to see you attempt something like this!
I live near the base of a mountain, 5 min drive and I'm at the entrance of a forest. Lovely place for a hike/dog walk, and most of my life I've been meaning to take up foraging for mushrooms. I absolutely love mushrooms, even raw, so I think this video (recommended by a friend) will be the push I need to take up my new hobby :)
My girlfriend and I were considering buying a similar book just last week. We eventually decided that it had too high of an entry level to yield any results and dropped it. But your energy in this video about how fun it is just to discover the species makes me want to go out and look around for myself. I sent her the video so 🤞
There are heaps of Facebook groups for mushroom identification, join one local to your area and have a look. Easy way to get started for free and know what to look for 🥰
Loved this vid. I grew up in a smallish flat, and while we all had books in our rooms, the "main" library was in the tiny toilet. People would never fail to comment on it the first time they'd go to the loo when they were at ours. I'd come home from school in the freezing cold, go straight to the loo (which had the benefit of having a radiator in a tiny space), and sit there reading my book or something from the shelves, sometimes for hours on end until I'd hear someone else get home ! Hadn't realised how much I missed it until this video, and hope I can recreate that space sometime soon. Thanks for the memory, made my day.
Even if you don't eat them it's just great knowing what everything is called. I don't know anything about mushrooms (I live in a desert), but I decided to learn the names of the trees in my neighborhood and the world is a much more exciting place.
I'm aware that mushroom picking is just not a thing in a lot of countries, but it's still interesting to see something that's considered a seasonal family pastime as somewhat exotic activity that needs a detailed introduction:) And a really well made introduction indeed! Especially about being cautious about what's actually edible- as I mentioned, foraging for mushrooms is rather common in Poland, and cases where someone mistook a death cap (can you guess where did the name came from?) for a parasol mushroom are not unheard of. So- amazing video as always! Oh, and I 100% agree with your opinion about porcini mushrooms:)
I learned to pick mushrooms from my parents and grandparents. The easiest is to identify a few that you really like the flavor of and that you know grow in your area. Then you can just ignore the rest. There are whole groups of mushrooms that contain very few poisonous species. Specifically group called "Boletus" are my favourite, supar easy to spot. You learn which trees they like to grow next to as well, which makes it easier to find them.
Hi Mike, I would just like to say that your videos always turn out stunning, and I would like to thank you for uploading such fantastic content. Your work has really inspired me to try so many new things, and I am extremely grateful!
It's funny that you say fungi are everywhere. Before I moved from (the notably green belt) of London to Glasgow, I think I'd only ever seen one wild mushroom in my life. Now I see them everywhere, all the time.
For a couple years I went out and found pounds of mushrooms, but not the normal cooking kind. I've been wanting to find things I can eat and not have to worry about getting in serious trouble for. Great video, Mike! Makes me want to forage again.
Don't trust the other guy selling spores obviously. And yeah that's cool I use to find amanita muscaria (fly argic) it's so difficult to explain but it helps you understand alot more compared to generic psilocybin.
@@KlMJONG-UN the buzzwords bring the bots lol yea if I'm not mistaken the compound you get after boiling amanita skin tops is closer to mescaline then regular psilocybin. I was always privy to cubes, but tried many of the chems of the acidic and deemz variety.
@@cs-gl3bq Thankfully muscimol doesn't last as long as mescaline. Whilst I can't experientially speak for the latter I hear it grounds you to the here and now, whereas muscimol can be dreamlike and bring on slight delirium.
Man its great you joined the crew. I started foraging last year aswell and it has been so great. Last year my girlfriend spotted a group of porchini's and damn those were delicious. Mycology is one of the most rewarding hobby's i have ever discovered, and its pretty much the only thing that gets me outside in autumn times
Did you find any this year? I found it to be a good season for porcini, to my delight I even found a new spot that was producing abundantly. It looks like the season is coming to an end now though, so it's onto the blewits.
@@colinyoung3685 yes definitely, couple of weeks ago I found a good patch of porcinis, and some wood blewits too. Yesterday I went foraging and found a lot of saffron milk caps and shrimp russula which I ate with my girlfriend today. They were super delicious.
Psilocybin containing mushrooms saved my life. The drastically reduced my benzodiazepine withdrawal allowing me to quite illicit pill addiction after three years of heavy daily use before it would had became medically dangerous to quit. It has also helped me survive depression.
The Trips I've been having really helped me a lot,I finally feel in control of my emotions and my future and things that used to be mundane to me now seem incredible and full of nuance on top of that I'm way less driven by my ego and I have alot more empathy as well
@Lillian Victoria I was having this constant, unbearable anxiety because of university stress. Not until I came across *dr.jeromespores* a very intelligent mycologist. He saved my life honestly
@@ryancihet555 I feel the same way too. I put too much on my plate and it definitely affects my stress and anxiety levels. I am also glad to be a part of this community.
I can only rliably identify 3 mushrooms: psilocybe semilanceata (a choice specimen), amanita muscaria and amanita phalloides, although there are others I can tell apart and I know roughly what other poisonous mushrooms look like and I know what sort of things to look for to tell mushrooms apart, I've never really went out of my way to learn- there was an obvious motive to learn how to forage liberty caps- it is a special gourmet mushroom, prized across the continent!
I've heard a lot of tripping stories, and they are very exciting,I would love to try magic mushrooms but I can't easily get some, Is there any realiable source I can purchase from??
I was having this constant, unbearable anxiety because of university stress. Not until I came across bergwilly1, a very intelligent mycologist.He saved my life honestly
I have a house in Iowa and we morel mushroom hunt every year for 30 years now on our land, we bring in about 30-60 pounds. Mike DM me if you wanna make a video out here I’ll take you on my land. Morels are the most expensive edible mushroom. Best tasting as well haha.
Yes! great video I was surprised as a kid, that almost nobody in any other countries (I live in Czech rep.) goes out and pick wild mushrooms. Here in Czechia, it's very common and it's also a nice way to spend time with your family.
to a certain extent it's because of cultural changes in western europe over the past decades that lead to a loss of understanding of our natural surroundings, but it's also because during the cold war, the soviet union would promote mushroom foraging, since it was nice way of bulking up any meal for free and was also a nice family-friendly activity.
@@rfldss89 Sorry, but I don't buy the whole soviets encouraging picking mushrooms. People have been picking them for thousands of years. Its just a most people in USSR didn't have ready meals and packaged meals to the same level of western world/USA. So its just natural to continue the tradition that people have been doing for god knows how long.
Some areas have soil that is more radioactive or contaminated with heavy metals than is healthy, so make sure to check that also. Near roads the lead contamination can be particularly high for example. And in southern Bavaria there are several mushroom species that absorb too much caesium from the Chornobyl desaster to be eaten safely
In Norway we have people in the towns that, for free, will look at the mushrooms you've gathered and tell you what they are and info. Wish we had stuff like that in Scotland too.
My parents were bringing me to the forest for mushrooms since my childhood (my methods of identification used to be "mom, look what I found") so seeing your scientific approach was a bit baffling, but understandable, given how easy it is to poison youself with misindentified shrooms. (btw did your book tell you that there is a shroom that looks like porcini but is very bitter? My granma told me about them, she, granpa, and her mom learned about them the hard way when they were visiting relatives) Also, I am super envious that where you live there are mushrooms now. Where I am this year was a super hot august and now it is too cold for them. And those porcini? I can count on my hand how many times I was able to find them in my life. (Competition here is not only bugs but also other people). But I am glad that you were able to learn how to differentiate eadible mushrooms. It is indeed very fun to search through forest for them, like a very rewarding treasure hunt.
My first thought was "wait, cant everybody do this?" I guess not but here in the Czech Republic it is a completely normal thing. I remeber foraging for mushrooms with my grandma since i was like 5 years old.
the climate where I live is too dry for mushrooms. I think I've only seen wild ones twice in my life. but yes, it's interesting that it's unpopular in a climate as temperate as Scotland
I forage a bit, and to me it seems you're much more likely to die from eating random roots, flowers, leaves and berries you find than mushrooms. Sure some are scarily dangerous but most are rather harmless and/or just not that tasty. Also nice porcini, gotta get em' young. Not saying go eat random things, but for mushrooms you can very easily identify at least a few edible and delicious ones and be very safe. For plants things quickly get very miniscule and very detailed if you want to make absolutely sure you've got the right thing.
I don't know how about other countries but in Poland collecting mushrooms is almost like national sport in autumn. Everyone here gathers the skill of collecting edible mushrooms as a kid 😄. And in my entire life (33 years) I heard only two times that someone ended in hospital after eating poisonous mushroom.
I can't find a source anywhere for any good psychedelics in my area, I suffer some pretty bad depression and i got a chance to try K and man it was a miracle substance, I felt free,the only high or euphoria was from the relief of my vices being released, that's exactly what it did
Mushroom completely turned my life around and my anxiety and panic attack disappeared and my personality changed into a much more generous loving person
Been foraging mushrooms in SW England for a few years. Jealous of Scotland, you get lots of good stuff up there. A great book is (the late) Roger Phillips’s “Mushrooms” if you’re interested to learn more, it’s regarded as one of the best value guides by the community
I also very much recommend using pocket guides when out in the field over apps which are vary rarely correct or accurate as they cannot utilise everything a human uses for a proper ID
so great to see you getting into mushroom foraging. it's great that mushrooms slowly get more mainstream attention in the west. i always go mushroom hunting with a ukrainian friend. he really knows his mushrooms.
I had the wonderful experience of living with a forager in uni halls the one year. And as it happened that year the woodchip used to fill the flowerbeds (all around our halls complex) was infested with morel mushrooms.
My grandparents always took as foraging mushrooms in autumnas kids , since he was a retired hunter and ranger. It was such a rewarding and of course tasty activity which i still remember fondly.
Love your stuff man🤞, truly inspiring for me personally. You’ve learnt so many things and I’ve been along for journey for a long time now. I wish you all the best in your life and future endeavours🙏. Can’t wait for your next instalment and what it contains.
Worth looking into how to make mushroom spore syrup. Can spread the spores all over the yard and where conditions are right mushrooms are likely to start popping up within a year. October is great in my area for wild mushrooms and I'm going to spread spores throughout a friends yard of as many different kinds as I can get hold of.
as a person that grew up with my grandma and mom going out to the woods with us in the fitting months since i was very young, im so used to the 20-30 good and tasty mushrooms that grow around here im so used to that. you should definetly be careful still, mushrooms grow so fast and theres a bunch of new ones you never seen before every other season just cuz they spread so fast but having the skill is definetly great to have, and just a different kind of fun to forage and eat what you worked for, + dried mushrooms are great to use in everything
It's crazy how different our cultures are. As a Pole i've known how to forage mushrooms since i was a kid and pretty much everyone (even kids) are able to recognize most common edible mushrooms here :D. As many people said you can treat it as recreational sport and once fall begins a lot of peaple are preparing to pick up mushrooms from the wild :P.
I grew up picking mushrooms as a kid in the UK growing up on a farm. Quite rare in that regard but we used to forage field mushrooms (as called by my parents) and parasols. Not entirely sure if those are the right names but I can confidently still spot them now (whatever their names really are) and occasionally pick some when I'm sure of what they are. Love having fried mushrooms I picked myself.
Both are valid names for fairly easy to ID mushrooms, so my bet would be your parents were correct. Mistaking a yellow stainer for a field mushroom is possible though, so damaging the cap to make sure it doesn't discolour yellow is prudent (it is responsible for the most poisonings in the UK).
Loved the video. There is just one thing that you should consider when foraging mushrooms. It is better to cut them at the bottom rather than pulling them out whole since this allows for new mushrooms to grow in that location. Greetings from Germany!
Dang, now between this video and Cody's Lab exploring mushroom farming, I _REALLY_ wish I liked mushrooms! It's a whole culinary world I just can never get into! I don't know what it is, it's like an instinctual repulsion to nearly all fungi. The look, smell, taste, texture, thought of what they are... no other food is like this to me, but I can detect even finely minced mushrooms cooked into a larger dish. I've tried getting myself to like them over the years, but the best I can do is not gagging when I eat one in a dish. Anyone know why this could be? It's been literally my whole life.
I've never met another of "my kind" before Lol but if you ever do figure out why that is let me know because I'm the exact same way and it's baffling to me. I've tried explaining it my entire life but no one else I know seems to understand it either. Also neat to see a fellow Cody fan here, though I can't say I'm surprised about some overlap in fans, these two guys have some crazy and fascinating videos!
id say you should give certain wild fungi a try. lobster fungi and chicken of the woods are very meaty and not at all similar to what you would find in the store
@@Sp3c9000 Haha, so glad to know I'm not alone! I really wish I could stand mushrooms, but I can smell them even upstairs when my roommates use them. Apparently they don't smell like dirty armpit to anyone else, go figure!
Not all mushrooms taste the same. Cauliflower mushroom and boletes are very different from the button ones you get at the store. And the way you prepare them is also important. You probably dislike the slimy texture and taste when undercooked. Especially finely minced ones are hard to cook properly. You want to cook out all the moisture, and then caramelize them. That takes about 15 - 20 minutes, and a lot of people don't take that time. See if you can get your hands on porcini. Slice them up, half inch thick. Fry them in a pan with butter, salt, pepper and garlic. Make sure you caramelize each side. Then come back and tell me how impressed you are with their taste.
@@Flippokid fully sauteed/caramelized is the worst, the smell makes me gag in my room upstairs on the other side of the house when they're cooked. It takes the part of the smell I can't stand and concentrates it.
DUDE NO!!!!! Don't tear them out!!!! You have to cut them with a knife before the mycelium line so that they can regrow! It's a very important thing, especially if there are many people that harvest a given area!
Not true mushrooms are just the fruiting body of a big system of mycelium. The mycelium network doesn't get damaged at all. Also, I cultivate mushrooms and rip them out. Even after ripping them out, they always grow back.
Cool vid. Been thinking about mushroom hunting recently. Got a buddy who knows his stuff and am gunna see if I can’t join him next time he’s going shroom hunting.
Foraging for mushrooms is a VERY common pastime/hobby in Russia. My mom is an incredible forager and knows the forests around our summer house/dacha like no other. She taught me a lot about foraging for mushrooms, but I don't have the patience for it. But I do love myself some armillaria mushrooms. Pickled.
I might have to try pickling them. I have tried honey fungus fried in butter but was not too impressed. I know a fair few spots where they are, and very often see them when foraging anyway. If they are tasty when prepared through pickling I have definitely been missing out.
4:43 your motto is strikingly similar to David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified (1979/86) -which was later used as a mycology textbook in University courses. He says "When in doubt, throw it out". I've been a fungiphile for decades, and that has been my grimoire. It's an amazing book and I recommend it for further information (and to your American viewers). Granted it's for North America, but I study also mushrooms of other continents...worldwide sporing is part of fungiphilia after.
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
I don't know if you're aware but when foraging you should put them in a mesh bag rather than the Tupperware. This is for the mushroom to still be able to spread it's spores as you walk. Love the video!
Atomic Shrimp enjoyer
Fcking bots
The main advantage of mesh basket is just to keep the mushrooms aerated so that they don't rot with the moisture. Spores do not matter. The spores are all over the place already and the part we harvest is only the tip of the mycelial network. Furthermore, a lot of the species are harvested before the spores mature.
@@Cruuzy fck em
From what I've heard from other foragers, a mesh bag (or any other aerated container) is really more to keep the mushie friends nice and fresh.
In central Europe, Slavic specifically, it is very common for people to go in the forests nearby their homes and pick mushrooms. People would get home with huge baskets full of large mushrooms that they would later either cook right away or somehow conserve in jars in brine or dry them. It is almost a national sport for the elderly.
Also if you go foraging again, use knife to cut near the shaft. Don't yank it out. It disturbs mycelium and slows down growth.
Yea here in the Slavic are there aren't a lot of poisonous mushrooms
thats not true, stop spewing misinformation
i can say the same about the baltics. To know a common edible or unedible mushroom is common knowledge
Not just for the elderly - it's a family activity here in Poland, I was picking mushrooms a kid with my parents and we still do it. Every family has their own favourite "secret" spots where the best ones grow, and so on. If you stick to the few easy to recognize species, you're fine. Those are the species that are really obvious and it would be almost impossible to confuse with anything else here - like porcini.
@@Arkhalis404 Yep, same with the Czech republic!
No wonder Mike is such a fun guy.
Scrolled back up to give this a thumbs up
I tip my cap to you, sir!
@@paulypaul624 why a hat
He is quite a good Mike-ologist.
Many of these puns are in spore taste...
In the UK it is not a tradition to pick mushrooms, but here in Slovakia and other central european countries almost everyone goes and forages edible mushrooms and is almost like a recreational sport.
In Britain foraging is pretty common in the countryside, not so much in large towns and cities tho.
However you do get more people from the cities getting into foraging
in germany as well, just went out about 2 weeks ago with some mates and we found a a ton of them!
Right you are, bro👍
Tak to je pravda kamarát ;) 🇸🇰
Have you got any tips on Russulas? There are so many that look like toxic counterparts but they're supposed to be really tasty.
I’m glad you got it on your first attempt. It took me a couple deaths to get it down.
You missed an "it" after "got"
What's the respawn timer like?
A couple of deaths. 😂
Just came back from a mushroom hunt with 4 kilos of porcini! You're right, they don't taste like any other mushroom, and they taste amazing!
Fortunately I had a little bit of start-up help. Experienced people pointed out the Chicken of the Woods to me, and then I started learning about the beginner level mushrooms. Boletes (if it has a dark head it's always safe to eat), Blackening Polypore (not very tasty but a lot of proteins), Oyster mushrooms, Cauliflower... When I found one I would try to identify it with an app (the app sucked though, so I tossed it out after 3 misidentifications) and bring it home and do more research like you.
Now I got 2 guides and a ton of knowledge more, and I'm starting to dive into the Russulas. Supposedly very tasty, but also very easy to confuse with inedible or even toxic counterparts.
I can't stress how much fun it is to go through the forest and interacting with it instead of just barging through. Also it feels like real life Skyrim when you stand in an area and slowly start seeing more and more Amethyst Deceivers pop up as your eyes adjust.
👆👆👆👆I recently started microdosing and using psilocybin coupled with therapy. It has helped opened my emotions up
Check him out 🖕
Here in Poland we're now in the middle of mushroom forage frenzy :D It's almost like national sport, hehe. Tasty mushrooms I wish you.
Właśnie wróciłem z grzybobrania, udało mi się zebrać 15 miodówek, kilka podgrzybków i jednego kleszcza.
Yeah, i’m czech and we have the mushroom obsession too, i think its a western slavic cultural cornerstone
Lmao I just got 3 notifs at once of a guy trying to sell drugs in a youtube comment section (it's propably a scam)
@@justafurrywithinternet317 "propably" That is definitley a scam
@@itiso1123 You know, from now on I will reply to literally any bot with "ligma balls" and not elaborate.
Thanks for great video with reasoning about foraging mushrooms. In my homeland - central Europe, everbody is used to forage mushrooms. In the woods is located large amount of species, but ordinary people is driven by only one rule - pick only that you know. No need to know them all. In total from all possible edible species people mostly forage only 10% of edible species and still everybody is taking huge baskets of mushrooms every visit of the forests.
mike is probably the only non-pop star celebrity that I'd actually love to meet
i feel like he's just like the most chill dude of all time
Just be cautious about where your book was published. European mushrooms are different to American. Here in Australia the number one cause of mushroom poisoning is misidentification, by experienced foragers, who got their experience from other countries. There are many poisonous lookalikes here that would be "unmistakable" in other countries. Also, I have used those apps here and find the opposite, they are extremely unreliable here.
Upside-down & oppposite world.
He says in the description to find one specific to your area
Yeah but you guys also have like two and a half feet long cockroaches and spiders you have to pick up with both hands...jesus, it's like world 4 on Super Mario 3 🤣
Stop being a drug addict, seek god.
Picking mushrooms is a popular family activity here in Poland. I was picking mushrooms a kid with my parents and we still do it. Every family has their own favourite "secret" spots where the best ones grow, and so on. If you stick to the few easy to recognize species, you're always fine. Those are the species that are really obvious and it would be almost impossible to confuse with anything else here - like porcini.
👆👆
I am from the Czech republic and mushroom foraging is EXTREMELY popular. Every family does it and has heaps of fun doing it. Not long ago me and my family were able to find over 1.5kg of one specific type of mushroom (I am unsure what as to what it is called in English) and we ate it all within 3 days!
Bedle uživatelé?
IMO, the easiest way to safely get into foraging mushrooms is chanterelles. I'm specifically talking about Cantharellus cibarius because, at least in Northern Europe, it grows so early (in late July onwards) that not many other mushrooms are yet up. So, it's not hard to identify it. It is delicious, easy to cook and almost never has any maggots or other creeps in it. Also, if you find a good spot you can literally find several kilos of it.
Love your videos I hope your foraging journey continues
Two? Just Two? You are very courageous! I have 3, admittedly not perfect, apps and one pdf book in my phone + I check them from a few different web pages.
Great video! I've been mushroom foraging lots of time in my home country of Lithuania. I usually look for chanterelles which are delicious when cooked. They easy to spot and there's absolutely loads of them. You can come home with buckets of them if all goes well. I also very rarely found some porcini mushrooms, which are usually always infested by bugs. I've also spotted some dangerous and even deadly mushrooms before such as fly agaric and even green, and grey deathcaps. Happy foraging!
👆👆
Hey Mike if you find some Saffron Milkcaps fry them on a pan with butter and salt, eat with good bread. My favourite part is just dipping bread in the butter. Its amazing. Real delicacy here in Poland. Foraging mushrooms is so common in Poland that its really strange for me to think people in UK don't do it like us.
I'm still looking to find my first milkcap :/
What an interesting video! Here in Italy it's pretty common for elderly people to forage mushrooms, because they have a lot of experience and can easily identify them. In Italy the national health care system has centres where you can take your mushrooms and get them checked by experts, if you are not sure whether they are safe to eat.
mushroom picking is a great hobby. i got in to it when i was 15 in north eastern usa. when you get a small harvest and satue them its quite the experience. it also expanded my interest in foraging from berries, roots to wild onions. when you find edibles in the woods theres magic like catching a fish. in my teens we would spend hours in the fields looking for subbs and on a few occasions we got a big harvest to dry and make tea. im glad you are professional with multiple sources and a good book. every mushroom hunter needs a good book that can get dirty.
👆👆👆👆I recently started microdosing and using psilocybin coupled with therapy. It has helped opened my emotions up
Look him up 👆
I've always been fascinated about stenographers in court rooms and how the stenotype machines work and how difficult it would actually be for someone to learn the system they use to transcribe at 360 words per minute in real time! Would be interesting to see you attempt something like this!
I live near the base of a mountain, 5 min drive and I'm at the entrance of a forest. Lovely place for a hike/dog walk, and most of my life I've been meaning to take up foraging for mushrooms. I absolutely love mushrooms, even raw, so I think this video (recommended by a friend) will be the push I need to take up my new hobby :)
My girlfriend and I were considering buying a similar book just last week. We eventually decided that it had too high of an entry level to yield any results and dropped it. But your energy in this video about how fun it is just to discover the species makes me want to go out and look around for myself. I sent her the video so 🤞
Hey fam, go for it but also do more research, some may look edible but require some special cooking preparations before you can eat
@@itookaonabookanyway7385 Yeah man, definitely a concern. I think eating them can wait. For now I'd be happy enough to just identify them.
There are heaps of Facebook groups for mushroom identification, join one local to your area and have a look. Easy way to get started for free and know what to look for 🥰
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@@PhillipBell how are you gonna preach caution and then recommend an ID app lol, those are nowhere near reliable enough.
Loved this vid. I grew up in a smallish flat, and while we all had books in our rooms, the "main" library was in the tiny toilet. People would never fail to comment on it the first time they'd go to the loo when they were at ours. I'd come home from school in the freezing cold, go straight to the loo (which had the benefit of having a radiator in a tiny space), and sit there reading my book or something from the shelves, sometimes for hours on end until I'd hear someone else get home ! Hadn't realised how much I missed it until this video, and hope I can recreate that space sometime soon. Thanks for the memory, made my day.
Even if you don't eat them it's just great knowing what everything is called. I don't know anything about mushrooms (I live in a desert), but I decided to learn the names of the trees in my neighborhood and the world is a much more exciting place.
Man lives in the dessert
@@miguelalonsogarcia2475 lol
Hello! I am from Sweden and picking wild mushrooms is actually very common here.
Please do more foraging videos!!! I love these so much!
Enjoyed the 'morel' of the story. Cheers Mike
I'm aware that mushroom picking is just not a thing in a lot of countries, but it's still interesting to see something that's considered a seasonal family pastime as somewhat exotic activity that needs a detailed introduction:)
And a really well made introduction indeed! Especially about being cautious about what's actually edible- as I mentioned, foraging for mushrooms is rather common in Poland, and cases where someone mistook a death cap (can you guess where did the name came from?) for a parasol mushroom are not unheard of.
So- amazing video as always! Oh, and I 100% agree with your opinion about porcini mushrooms:)
Mistake a death cap for a parasol sounds very much like a rookie mistake.
Really glad you are back! Enjoying your videos!
Loving the new storytelling style, Mike!
I learned to pick mushrooms from my parents and grandparents. The easiest is to identify a few that you really like the flavor of and that you know grow in your area. Then you can just ignore the rest. There are whole groups of mushrooms that contain very few poisonous species. Specifically group called "Boletus" are my favourite, supar easy to spot. You learn which trees they like to grow next to as well, which makes it easier to find them.
This has potential to be one of my favourite videos from you
Same here.. Mycojosh gat me always you can check him out 🍄
Sounds like an absolutely magical experience.
Hi Mike, I would just like to say that your videos always turn out stunning, and I would like to thank you for uploading such fantastic content. Your work has really inspired me to try so many new things, and I am extremely grateful!
It's funny that you say fungi are everywhere. Before I moved from (the notably green belt) of London to Glasgow, I think I'd only ever seen one wild mushroom in my life. Now I see them everywhere, all the time.
For a couple years I went out and found pounds of mushrooms, but not the normal cooking kind. I've been wanting to find things I can eat and not have to worry about getting in serious trouble for. Great video, Mike! Makes me want to forage again.
Don't trust the other guy selling spores obviously. And yeah that's cool I use to find amanita muscaria (fly argic) it's so difficult to explain but it helps you understand alot more compared to generic psilocybin.
@@KlMJONG-UN the buzzwords bring the bots lol yea if I'm not mistaken the compound you get after boiling amanita skin tops is closer to mescaline then regular psilocybin. I was always privy to cubes, but tried many of the chems of the acidic and deemz variety.
@@cs-gl3bq Thankfully muscimol doesn't last as long as mescaline. Whilst I can't experientially speak for the latter I hear it grounds you to the here and now, whereas muscimol can be dreamlike and bring on slight delirium.
Pretty cool ! Started foraging in France 5 years ago, you never stop learning about these things
Man its great you joined the crew. I started foraging last year aswell and it has been so great. Last year my girlfriend spotted a group of porchini's and damn those were delicious. Mycology is one of the most rewarding hobby's i have ever discovered, and its pretty much the only thing that gets me outside in autumn times
Did you find any this year? I found it to be a good season for porcini, to my delight I even found a new spot that was producing abundantly. It looks like the season is coming to an end now though, so it's onto the blewits.
@@colinyoung3685 yes definitely, couple of weeks ago I found a good patch of porcinis, and some wood blewits too. Yesterday I went foraging and found a lot of saffron milk caps and shrimp russula which I ate with my girlfriend today. They were super delicious.
Freakin Mike Boyd. You're back! It's good to see you again friend.
Psilocybin containing mushrooms saved my life. The drastically reduced my benzodiazepine withdrawal allowing me to quite illicit pill addiction after three years of heavy daily use before it would had became medically dangerous to quit. It has also helped me survive depression.
The Trips I've been having really helped me a lot,I finally feel in control of my emotions and my future and things that used to be mundane to me now seem incredible and full of nuance on top of that I'm way less driven by my ego and I have alot more empathy as well
@Lillian Victoria I was having this constant, unbearable anxiety because of university stress. Not until I came across *dr.jeromespores* a very intelligent mycologist. He saved my life honestly
@Lillian Victoria *l *G*
@Lillian Victoria That’s where you’ll find his handle 👆🏻
@@ryancihet555 I feel the same way too. I put too much on my plate and it definitely affects my stress and anxiety levels. I am also glad to be a part of this community.
Can we please just agree that Mike is the best RUclipsr hands down xx
I can only rliably identify 3 mushrooms: psilocybe semilanceata (a choice specimen), amanita muscaria and amanita phalloides, although there are others I can tell apart and I know roughly what other poisonous mushrooms look like and I know what sort of things to look for to tell mushrooms apart, I've never really went out of my way to learn- there was an obvious motive to learn how to forage liberty caps- it is a special gourmet mushroom, prized across the continent!
I didn’t know there were RUclips comment bots that sell psychedelics. You always learn something new from a Mike Boyd video.
Ikr?
Lool you even got them in your replies
I guess they comment under any video that has ‘mushroom’ in the title.
I've heard a lot of tripping stories, and they are very exciting,I would love to try magic mushrooms but I can't easily get some, Is there any realiable source I can purchase from??
I have been looking for a legit seller to buy from.
I was having this constant, unbearable anxiety because of university stress. Not until I came across bergwilly1, a very intelligent mycologist.He saved my life honestly
came across the comments about him and I must say he is a genius.
Is he on inSta?
Does bergwilly1 ship ?
I have a house in Iowa and we morel mushroom hunt every year for 30 years now on our land, we bring in about 30-60 pounds. Mike DM me if you wanna make a video out here I’ll take you on my land. Morels are the most expensive edible mushroom. Best tasting as well haha.
Yes! great video
I was surprised as a kid, that almost nobody in any other countries (I live in Czech rep.) goes out and pick wild mushrooms. Here in Czechia, it's very common and it's also a nice way to spend time with your family.
Same in Poland. I thought it's just... a thing people do in autumn, not an explicitly mid to eastern european activity.
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to a certain extent it's because of cultural changes in western europe over the past decades that lead to a loss of understanding of our natural surroundings, but it's also because during the cold war, the soviet union would promote mushroom foraging, since it was nice way of bulking up any meal for free and was also a nice family-friendly activity.
@@rfldss89 Sorry, but I don't buy the whole soviets encouraging picking mushrooms. People have been picking them for thousands of years. Its just a most people in USSR didn't have ready meals and packaged meals to the same level of western world/USA. So its just natural to continue the tradition that people have been doing for god knows how long.
@@MartinZeme ok and? you just proved the point of the guy you are disagreeing with.
always appreciate an upload from Mike Boyd!
Some areas have soil that is more radioactive or contaminated with heavy metals than is healthy, so make sure to check that also. Near roads the lead contamination can be particularly high for example. And in southern Bavaria there are several mushroom species that absorb too much caesium from the Chornobyl desaster to be eaten safely
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This fact has always fascinated me, if done correctly the potential for fungus to clean environments of pollutants is very compelling.
In Norway we have people in the towns that, for free, will look at the mushrooms you've gathered and tell you what they are and info.
Wish we had stuff like that in Scotland too.
My parents were bringing me to the forest for mushrooms since my childhood (my methods of identification used to be "mom, look what I found") so seeing your scientific approach was a bit baffling, but understandable, given how easy it is to poison youself with misindentified shrooms. (btw did your book tell you that there is a shroom that looks like porcini but is very bitter? My granma told me about them, she, granpa, and her mom learned about them the hard way when they were visiting relatives)
Also, I am super envious that where you live there are mushrooms now. Where I am this year was a super hot august and now it is too cold for them. And those porcini? I can count on my hand how many times I was able to find them in my life. (Competition here is not only bugs but also other people). But I am glad that you were able to learn how to differentiate eadible mushrooms. It is indeed very fun to search through forest for them, like a very rewarding treasure hunt.
The bitter bolete has dark reticulation (netting pattern) on the stem, and a nibble test will remove all doubt!
Crazy how you are so careful yet i would go out to pick those my grandma told me are edible when i was a kid.
My first thought was "wait, cant everybody do this?" I guess not but here in the Czech Republic it is a completely normal thing. I remeber foraging for mushrooms with my grandma since i was like 5 years old.
Fucking bots
the climate where I live is too dry for mushrooms. I think I've only seen wild ones twice in my life.
but yes, it's interesting that it's unpopular in a climate as temperate as Scotland
You should use a basket when foraging for mushrooms! The gaps in the basket allow for spores to fall as you go. Johnny apple seed style.
literally every Czech: "I was born and raised with this skill"
What the actual heck is happening here lol, these bots are pretty aggressive
7:30 the chairs back fits in with the rubik's cube background well.
I forage a bit, and to me it seems you're much more likely to die from eating random roots, flowers, leaves and berries you find than mushrooms. Sure some are scarily dangerous but most are rather harmless and/or just not that tasty. Also nice porcini, gotta get em' young.
Not saying go eat random things, but for mushrooms you can very easily identify at least a few edible and delicious ones and be very safe. For plants things quickly get very miniscule and very detailed if you want to make absolutely sure you've got the right thing.
Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing :) Mushroom foraging is the best way to relax and take better notice of your local woods
This might be my favourite video of yours yet! Such a cool topic, and presented so well!
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Hello. In Finland we used go mushroom hunting all the time in the fall. I love those wild mushrooms so much ❤
I don't know how about other countries but in Poland collecting mushrooms is almost like national sport in autumn. Everyone here gathers the skill of collecting edible mushrooms as a kid 😄. And in my entire life (33 years) I heard only two times that someone ended in hospital after eating poisonous mushroom.
I can't find a source anywhere for any good psychedelics in my area, I suffer some pretty bad depression and i got a chance to try K and man it was a miracle substance, I felt free,the only high or euphoria was from the relief of my vices being released, that's exactly what it did
The psychedelic experience is temporary but many people have permanent results
Mushroom completely turned my life around and my anxiety and panic attack disappeared and my personality changed into a much more generous loving person
doctor_mckenzie. ( Alexender)
Got psychedelics
I had 3.5 grams dried lemon tek most beautiful experience ever!!
@@joachimlunares4871where to search? Is it IG ??
Psychedelic mushrooms really healed me years back. Totally got rid of depression, anxiety and illicit pill addiction.
Psychedelics should only be used with great care and respect, I would love to feel same man , how do you source em
dr.perryshrooms is your guy. Got all kinds of psychedelics stuff. Guided me through my first ever experience
Yes, dr.perryshrooms. There's a lot of potential in psychedelics
The use of magic mushrooms can completely help one get over addiction and depression. but there’s a big risk if you eat the wrong type
Sure, discreet shipping to anywhere
I got mine delivered here in North Carolina.
So glad to have you back :) You are a wonderful energy to have around on RUclips
Comparing mushrooms to Pokémon actually helped me understand the process of looking for mushrooms a lot
How?
Been foraging mushrooms in SW England for a few years. Jealous of Scotland, you get lots of good stuff up there. A great book is (the late) Roger Phillips’s “Mushrooms” if you’re interested to learn more, it’s regarded as one of the best value guides by the community
I also very much recommend using pocket guides when out in the field over apps which are vary rarely correct or accurate as they cannot utilise everything a human uses for a proper ID
so great to see you getting into mushroom foraging. it's great that mushrooms slowly get more mainstream attention in the west. i always go mushroom hunting with a ukrainian friend. he really knows his mushrooms.
I had the wonderful experience of living with a forager in uni halls the one year. And as it happened that year the woodchip used to fill the flowerbeds (all around our halls complex) was infested with morel mushrooms.
My grandparents always took as foraging mushrooms in autumnas kids , since he was a retired hunter and ranger. It was such a rewarding and of course tasty activity which i still remember fondly.
good to have you back man, stay safe on that bike
I think there was only one kind of mushroom he wanted to learn how to forage for...
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Those kind usually grow on cow pies in Florida. Not so much in the woods in the UK
Yeah truffles ofc
@@dddon513 that absolutely do grow in the uk me and my friends trip every year on them
great job learning even more things, mike. very cool.
Love your stuff man🤞, truly inspiring for me personally. You’ve learnt so many things and I’ve been along for journey for a long time now.
I wish you all the best in your life and future endeavours🙏. Can’t wait for your next instalment and what it contains.
Worth looking into how to make mushroom spore syrup. Can spread the spores all over the yard and where conditions are right mushrooms are likely to start popping up within a year. October is great in my area for wild mushrooms and I'm going to spread spores throughout a friends yard of as many different kinds as I can get hold of.
I've heard so many wonderful things about magic mushrooms but I can't easily get some, Is there any realiable source I can purchase from??
I'm so interested in the experience but am terrified of having a bad trip
I did two grams last time, it was a thrilling experience and I enjoyed it
(doctor_ mckenzie)
Got psych's*
This whole thing is pretty new to me, can I try 3grams?
@@annamason3087 where to search? Is it IG ??
as a person that grew up with my grandma and mom going out to the woods with us in the fitting months since i was very young, im so used to the 20-30 good and tasty mushrooms that grow around here im so used to that.
you should definetly be careful still, mushrooms grow so fast and theres a bunch of new ones you never seen before every other season just cuz they spread so fast but having the skill is definetly great to have, and just a different kind of fun to forage and eat what you worked for, + dried mushrooms are great to use in everything
It's crazy how different our cultures are. As a Pole i've known how to forage mushrooms since i was a kid and pretty much everyone (even kids) are able to recognize most common edible mushrooms here :D. As many people said you can treat it as recreational sport and once fall begins a lot of peaple are preparing to pick up mushrooms from the wild :P.
A good place on RUclips to look for foraging tips is Atomic Shrimp's foraging series.
I learned how to smash the like button
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I grew up picking mushrooms as a kid in the UK growing up on a farm. Quite rare in that regard but we used to forage field mushrooms (as called by my parents) and parasols. Not entirely sure if those are the right names but I can confidently still spot them now (whatever their names really are) and occasionally pick some when I'm sure of what they are. Love having fried mushrooms I picked myself.
Both are valid names for fairly easy to ID mushrooms, so my bet would be your parents were correct. Mistaking a yellow stainer for a field mushroom is possible though, so damaging the cap to make sure it doesn't discolour yellow is prudent (it is responsible for the most poisonings in the UK).
Finally! I loved the first survival foraging video!
@Don't Read My Profile Photo ok
Idk why, but this is one of my fav videos that you’ve made
What about the magical ones? 😉
Especially the magical ones
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@@moomoocowsly ns, I thought that type of mushroom had a kind of darker ‘tip’ I guess. Similar shape though.
@@moomoocowsly yeah I know practically nothing tbh, I’d trust you way more than me.
Stop being a drug addict, seek god.
I really love your approach to life! Makes me optimistic for the future of humanity.
Loved the video. There is just one thing that you should consider when foraging mushrooms. It is better to cut them at the bottom rather than pulling them out whole since this allows for new mushrooms to grow in that location. Greetings from Germany!
Also use a wicker basket, it helps to spread spores!
Great video, Mike! Thank you for putting out this content.
Dang, now between this video and Cody's Lab exploring mushroom farming, I _REALLY_ wish I liked mushrooms! It's a whole culinary world I just can never get into!
I don't know what it is, it's like an instinctual repulsion to nearly all fungi. The look, smell, taste, texture, thought of what they are... no other food is like this to me, but I can detect even finely minced mushrooms cooked into a larger dish. I've tried getting myself to like them over the years, but the best I can do is not gagging when I eat one in a dish. Anyone know why this could be? It's been literally my whole life.
I've never met another of "my kind" before Lol but if you ever do figure out why that is let me know because I'm the exact same way and it's baffling to me.
I've tried explaining it my entire life but no one else I know seems to understand it either.
Also neat to see a fellow Cody fan here, though I can't say I'm surprised about some overlap in fans, these two guys have some crazy and fascinating videos!
id say you should give certain wild fungi a try. lobster fungi and chicken of the woods are very meaty and not at all similar to what you would find in the store
@@Sp3c9000 Haha, so glad to know I'm not alone! I really wish I could stand mushrooms, but I can smell them even upstairs when my roommates use them. Apparently they don't smell like dirty armpit to anyone else, go figure!
Not all mushrooms taste the same. Cauliflower mushroom and boletes are very different from the button ones you get at the store. And the way you prepare them is also important. You probably dislike the slimy texture and taste when undercooked. Especially finely minced ones are hard to cook properly. You want to cook out all the moisture, and then caramelize them. That takes about 15 - 20 minutes, and a lot of people don't take that time.
See if you can get your hands on porcini. Slice them up, half inch thick. Fry them in a pan with butter, salt, pepper and garlic. Make sure you caramelize each side. Then come back and tell me how impressed you are with their taste.
@@Flippokid fully sauteed/caramelized is the worst, the smell makes me gag in my room upstairs on the other side of the house when they're cooked. It takes the part of the smell I can't stand and concentrates it.
You should do an episode where you grow/ eat all your food you eat in a day! Also I really enjoyed this video.
DUDE NO!!!!! Don't tear them out!!!! You have to cut them with a knife before the mycelium line so that they can regrow! It's a very important thing, especially if there are many people that harvest a given area!
Not true mushrooms are just the fruiting body of a big system of mycelium. The mycelium network doesn't get damaged at all. Also, I cultivate mushrooms and rip them out. Even after ripping them out, they always grow back.
Cool vid. Been thinking about mushroom hunting recently. Got a buddy who knows his stuff and am gunna see if I can’t join him next time he’s going shroom hunting.
Foraging for mushrooms is a VERY common pastime/hobby in Russia. My mom is an incredible forager and knows the forests around our summer house/dacha like no other. She taught me a lot about foraging for mushrooms, but I don't have the patience for it. But I do love myself some armillaria mushrooms. Pickled.
I might have to try pickling them. I have tried honey fungus fried in butter but was not too impressed. I know a fair few spots where they are, and very often see them when foraging anyway. If they are tasty when prepared through pickling I have definitely been missing out.
@@colinyoung3685 oh, they're fantastic. Oily but firm. Goes great with alcohol.
I went out for porcini when i was younger with my father, good time for sundays at the end of the summer
Next video: my first experience on magic mushrooms
Stop being a drug addict, seek god.
Yay! Epic. Fell in love with wild foraging mushrooms during my AT thru hike last year. Free food is all around!
It would be really interesting to see more raw footage of you just out and about looking for, finding, and identifying fungi.
How to forage wild mushrooms without dying?
Don’t eat the poisonous ones. GG EZ!
Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.
Just want to recommend Atomic Shrimp's channel. UK based and master forager, think you'd enjoy it!
Your survival niche vids are my favorite
Thanks for the guide on identifying and eating wild mushrooms!
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4:43 your motto is strikingly similar to David Arora, author of Mushrooms Demystified (1979/86) -which was later used as a mycology textbook in University courses. He says "When in doubt, throw it out".
I've been a fungiphile for decades, and that has been my grimoire. It's an amazing book and I recommend it for further information (and to your American viewers). Granted it's for North America, but I study also mushrooms of other continents...worldwide sporing is part of fungiphilia after.