What to do with these dried morels?

January 10, 2018 4:13 PM

A friend gifted us with a quart-sized baggie filled with dried morels he collected in Iowa. Are they safe to eat, and how should we eat them?

I know basically nothing about mushroom hunting, except that eating the wrong mushroom will kill you. That said, this guy -- a work colleague of my husband's -- is apparently an experienced mushroom hunter who picks morels every year and dries them himself.

Would you eat them, in these circumstances?

If yes, how should I best prepare them?

posted by BlahLaLa to Food & Drink (13 answers total)

YES. What an amazing gift.

Dried morels will reconstitute in about 45 minutes -- cover them in hot water (add a dash of cognac if you like) and give them a squeeze every few minutes to see how they’re doing. Drain, press out the excess liquid, and you’re all set. They’ll keep another day in the refrigerator once they’ve been brought back to life. The reconstituting liquid gives you mushroom stock. Reduced and strained, you get a concentrated mushroom jus.

From there you can simple saute them in butter, or get as fancy as you like.
posted by ananci at 4:30 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Good advice above, but also: Carefully decant the liquid you soak them in. There's often sand and grit inside. But yes, have fun, enjoy them. Edit: we also harvest them from my friend's house in rural Indiana... cut them open and look for bugs, we've found slugs, beetles, etc. Just rinse them out.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 4:32 PM on January 10, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yes! Eat them! In fact, make this with them, and thank me later.
posted by Itaxpica at 5:17 PM on January 10, 2018

A fun trick is to pulse a couple dried mushrooms so they turn to powder. You can keep this in a jar with your other spices and use whenever you want some intense mushroom flavor. My favorite application that I've personally tried is in mashed potatoes - I have the potatoes ready to be mashed, melt some butter in a pan and sprinkle the mushroom dust into the butter and let it comingle at a low heat, then add the mushroomy butter to the potatoes to be mashed along with some dairy and salt. Oh man, I'm so hungry right now!

I think morels taste incredible with eggs in particular. Consider a morel and asparagus frittata. Also try risotto with a combination of morels and shitake - top with a piece of grilled salmon and some sauteed leeks.
posted by Mizu at 5:51 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

cut them open and look for bugs, we've found slugs, beetles, etc.

One of the quirks of morels is that tiny little bugs can hide in their pockmarked surfaces, and bigger ones can hide in their hollow stems. That said, one of the benefits of dehydrating mushrooms is that you also dehydrate any hitchhikers they may be carrying. Once you rehydrate the morels, either pour off all of the soaking liquid leaving the grit at the bottom, or strain the liquid through a coffee filter. You'll have no buggies.

Enjoy! There are false morels (gyromitras, specifically), but an experienced mushroomer will know how to tell the difference, and even if you happened to eat them they'd give you stomach upset at worst. Some people do actually eat them.
posted by mudpuppie at 6:15 PM on January 10, 2018

Throw them out, and don't metion them unless asked.
posted by Oyéah at 7:00 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

I'd use them to make a nice risotto. I would strain the rehydrating liquid and add that to the broth and then saute the rehydrated mushrooms and add them to the dish right before serving.
posted by mmascolino at 7:31 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ina Garten's Barefoot in Paris has the most amazing recipe for chicken with morels. Sometimes I just skip the chicken and do it with pasta. Yum, yum, yum! I'm very jealous. What a great colleague!
posted by karbonokapi at 7:54 PM on January 10, 2018

Morels are tasty. Some are toxic, but if you are sure that they are the right variety, then yes eat them. I keep dried mushrooms on hand for a variety of things. Crush them up and sprinkle some in ramen soup. Sprinkle crushed on egg noodles with some butter. Use to add flavor to meat sauces. It's a tasty spice to meat and egg dishes.
posted by gemmy at 8:35 PM on January 10, 2018

That is a phenomenal gift and I would eat them without hesitation. As has been pointed out, morels are easily identified; I'll add only that drying morels takes a little work, and gives all kinds of additional time for an experienced mycologist to figure out they're not handling a morel.

I'm only really here to give you this awesome recipe for morel risotto, which is perfect for dried morels. As a rule of thumb, dried morels take on about 10x their weight when re-hydrated, so use about 50 grams of the dried stuff for that recipe.
posted by ZaphodB at 8:39 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]

Personally, I'd reconstitute them as described above, then bread them and gently pan fry them until crispy. And then I would eat every single one of them.
posted by Temeraria at 8:45 PM on January 10, 2018

2nding a lot of the above. My spouse and I hunt morels and if we are lucky enough to find a lot will dehydrate them for later use. It’s pretty unlikely that this guy screwed up if he’s at all experienced- they’re very distinctive and hard to mix up even with false morels if you are even somewhat conscientious. We use them primarily in risottos, with pasta and as omelet/quiche/frittata filling.
posted by charmedimsure at 11:45 PM on January 10, 2018 [1 favorite]

Cook them very thoroughly, you cannot safely eat morels raw. Drink only minimal amounts of alcohol (or avoid completely) when eating your fantastic gift of absolutely delicious mushrooms. Morels plus alcohol are notorious for causing a very sudden and thorough episode of vomiting in people who have absolutely no mushroom allergy or sensitivity. (Which I sure did find out the hard way, yep.)
posted by desuetude at 6:59 AM on January 11, 2018