Morel mushrooms are fairly new to me. I never ate them or recall hearing about them until well into adulthood.
Just google “morel mushrooms” and you’ll see what a fanatical world this is. In value and popularity, they are akin to the beloved French truffle.
Well, not quite. I’ve seen morel mushrooms for sale at $36-66 per pound. French truffles can go for hundreds, even thousands, of dollars per pound.
I have had French truffles IN things, like the liver paté with truffles running through the middle we received for a gift last year. Yum. I’ll bet that cost a bit. Whatever the comparison, all I know is I LOVE them both, and morel mushrooms are here in Michigan. So I’ll “make do” with morels.
Our first April on the farm (2004) Don found a handful of morels near the pond in the back property. I found none.
Our second April here (2005) Don found another "handful" in the side yard under some trees, but each mushroom was almost as big as my hand! Again, I found none.
Both years Don soaked them in salted water, dried them off, then ASAP (within a day or two) floured and sautéd them in butter with lots of salt and pepper. A festival for the taste buds! (Sorry, Amy, I know you don’t like mushrooms! Bummer!) Finding only a few on our property and not wanting to pay $45/lb., we really savored this treat. These were my first morels to eat!
Morels soaking in salted water for a few minutes to remove dirt and critters
This week, the time they start popping up in Southern Michigan, we began the morel hunt on our 5 acres. No luck for several days though we looked in several areas. Then last evening, after a very cool night (28F), we went out to look, not really expecting anything since the best conditions are for night temps above 40F. So imagine my delight when I stepped on a patch of them before noticing them! (No worries, these are tough little guys that don't smush easily like some mushrooms.) Under the big old apple tree in the woods, my first morel find!
They look like tiny canteloupe
I would compare the feeling of ecstasy to that at the birth of my children. I ran to the house to a) get a grocery bag for the hundreds we would find (we actually found 47), and b) set “American Idol” to “record” so we could hunt and pick morels without missing who was going to be booted this week. (We picked Pickler, and we were right.)
I will be a bit late getting home this evening, and needless to say, I have asked Don very politely not to go out hunting until I get home. I have a feeling he will scout and maybe mark patches if he finds them. But I KNOW he won’t pick any until I get there.
Hunting and finding are almost as good as eating, and they round out the experience. What a glorious and spontaneous gift from Mother Earth.
We’ll do the eating this evening after the hunt. We did not eat yesterday’s find last night since we'd already eaten supper when we began our hunt, so we know we at least have 47 morels to eat for supper. And maybe nothing else, except a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Priceless.
The largest morel from yesterday was about 2 inches. The smallest less than an inch.
