When I was on vacation, I mentioned I was going to go look for chaga mushrooms in a post. I ended up bringing quite a lot of chaga back with me to Montreal, about 1 kg which is worth about $70 CAD.
Chaga mushrooms look like a cancerous growth on a tree. For some trees these types of growths are more of a sickness and shouldn't be consumed, but for other trees it's actually chaga mushroom and it's very healthy. You can safely collect chaga from the white and yellow birch, and sometimes from the maple tree in my geographical area. Other trees have the inonotus obliquus (chaga) parasitic fungus as a buried stem cancer and doesn't have the same appearance.
Chaga looks like charcoal on the outside, but inside it's a golden brown. The name chaga comes from Russia, but can be refered to as a clinker polypore, while in France it's called carie blanche spongieuse de bouleau (spongy white birch tree rot). Chaga is also called "black gold" because its black on the outside and golden on the inside.
Chaga has many minerals, vitamins and nutrients, as well as other positive health-effecting factors:
- B-complex vitamins
- vitamin D
- potassium
- rubidium
- cesium
- amino acids
- fiber
- copper
- selenium
- zinc
- iron
- manganese
- magnesium
- calcium
My girlfriend and I went out trekking the forest in search of chaga, yet we didn't find any. But just to say we found some on a tree, my uncle took us to a tree that had a big chunk high up on a tree for us to see. It was about 12 feet up.
My uncle had gotten most of it years ago by throwing an ax at it and taking chunks off, so the piece wasn't as big as it was. He gave me the ax to try to see if I could get a piece. I threw the ax and hit it on my first try, getting a little piece to collect. My successive throws didn't land though.
Although the chaga we brought back wasn't what we collected, I did manage to find and collect one piece myself ;)
My uncle chopped up the chaga he had collected over the past few months with a bench saw, and my girlfriend collected the amount she wanted. She ended up filling a cotton bag full, which amounted to about 1 kg of chaga mushroom pieces for us to bring back to Montreal. She didn't want to take more as we have limited space to bring things back with us.
If you ever go looking for chaga mushrooms, just stick to white or yellow birch trees. You can always check any black growth and see if you're not sure what the tree is. Crack it open and if you see a brown-yellow-golden color like the first picture above, then you know you have chaga mushroom.
To consume chaga, it's best as a tea. Put small pieces into boiling water for about 4 hours to infuse the water with the chaga, then you can consume the chaga tea. I think it's about 1/2 of chaga for 4 liters or water.
All photos taken by me, unless sourced from elsewhere
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