Mushroom season: Rooster Mushrooms (Chanterelles)

Mushroom season: Rooster Mushrooms (Chanterelles)

Mushrooms grow in Estonia all year round, well not really. They don't grow when there is snow on the ground, but non dependant on the outside degree, when there is now snow, mushrooms grow.

But in the middle of summer when weather feels almost tropical here in East Europe, it gets very hot and moist and the mushrooms thrive the best in these conditions, which is why most people go to gather mushrooms in July.

My favorite mushrooms are chanterelles, which we call Kukeseened (Rooster Mushrooms) in Estonia.
With the forest floor full of juicy mushrooms, it doesn't take long at all to get your quota met. As seen on the picture below, I got 2 bowls full of Chanterelles and it didn't even take up a full hour in the forest.

Despite getting all the mushrooms I needed under an hour, it still was a pretty decent workout. Because of the humid and hot weather it felt two or three times longer. The constant bending down and rising up also did a toll on my back, but luckily I know a cure for bad back after mushroom gathering.

And the cure is eating the loot!

But not quite yet, first we need to prepare and cook them delicious chanterelles.

First step is to clean the mushrooms of dirt, leaves, bugs and other stuff that sticks to them on the florest floor. There are 2 ways to clean mushrooms, one is to soak them in water but that removes the taste and smell from them, so the second and more tedious way of cleaning them is with a knife and a brush.
If you look back at the last picture you can see I had a special tool for that, a 2 in 1 knife and brush. It is boring and tedious to clean them, but it's worth the work for the end result. It took an hour to clean the mushrooms and move onto the next steps.

Next there are a lot of different ways to prepare chanterelles, but I decided to just cook them, and the best way to cook them is to first cut them into smaller pieces.

Now I just had to cook them.
When cooking mushrooms I place them on a dry pan and heat them until they start flowing out juices themselves. Let them cook for about 10-15 minutes until they turn nice gold brown, and at some point added salt to enchance the taste.

The mushrooms turned out great and my family enjoyed the meal. It's another wonderful delicacy that is just sitting in the nearest forest at almost all times of the year.
And it's completely free!

Thanks for reading my post!