Ingredients
- 1/2 cup chopped onion
- 1/2 cup chopped celery
- 2 carrots, sliced
- 1/2 cup sliced parsnip
- 1/2 cup peeled and diced turnip
- 1 golden potato, cubed
- 1 cup cubed sweet potato
- 1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 1-1/4 cups water
- 2 tablespoons Allegro Original Marinade
- 1 cup mushrooms (we use wood ear and amber jelly roll mushrooms)
- Precooked meat from 1 rabbit and 2 squirrels
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350 F.
- Place all vegetables except mushrooms in an oven-proof baking dish with a lid.
- In a separate bowl, combine soup with water and Allegro, stirring until well-blended. Pour mixture over vegetables.
- Put lid on baking dish, and bake 1 hour.
- After vegetables have baked 1 hour, add mushrooms and cooked rabbit and squirrel meat. Cover dish with lid, and cook another 30 minutes.
- Note: For this recipe, you’ll need to parboil the squirrel and rabbit ahead of time until the meat falls from the bone.
Get tips on oyster mushroom identification and learn about foraging other winter mushrooms. Cook them up with these wild mushroom, rabbit, and squirrel recipes.
Mushroom Foraging Safety
If you find an oyster-like mushroom on pines, hemlocks, or any conifer, avoid it. You’ve likely encountered angel wing (Pleurocybella porrigens), which is toxic. For any mushroom hunting, be sure you can confidently identify your fungi before consuming it.
As is true with the vast majority of wild edible mushrooms, don’t eat oyster mushrooms, wood ears, or amber jelly rolls raw, as gastrointestinal issues can occur.
Oyster Mushrooms: Identification Tips
Small-game animals aren’t the only food to be found in the winter landscape. If you switch gears from hunting to foraging, you can supplement your rabbit stew with a few tasty fungi. Oysters, wood ears (also known as “tree ears”), and amber jelly rolls are three of the most common winter mushrooms in the United States. Of the trio, oysters are by far the best-tasting and most versatile for cooking.
Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) can be found throughout much of North America from winter through spring. From my experience, they’re most likely to appear on cool, damp winter days when the temperature hovers between 40 and 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Fan-shaped with curvy margins, these mushrooms can range in size from 2 to 10 inches. They’re usually dark-brown, but they also appear grayish-brown, buff, or even creamy-white. Elaine believes they smell fishy, but I think they have more of an anise or fruity aroma. Look for them on dead or dying hardwoods.
I enjoy oysters as toppings on venison and turkey burgers; in soups, salads, and egg dishes; or stir-fried as a side dish.
Foraging for Other Winter Mushrooms
Wood ears (Auricularia spp.) are easy to identify. If you find a brown mushroom several inches across that looks like someone misplaced an ear on a dead tree, stump, or limb, you’ve located this fungus. There are three types of wood ear found only in the United States: A. americana grows on conifers, A. angiospermarum grows on hardwoods, and A. fuscosuccinea is found on hardwoods mostly in the southeastern states.
A member of the jelly mushroom family, the amber jelly roll (Exidia recisa) is another common winter fungus that’s easy to identify. If you’ve found small, brownish gobs of rubbery fungi on a dead stick, you’ve come across amber jelly roll. I most often encounter this mushroom after a heavy snow or ice storm, when hardwoods shed their dead branches – often covered with these fungi. Some folks uncharitably describe amber jelly roll as “snot on a stick,” which, though accurate, is decidedly unappetizing. In reality, both wood ears and amber jelly rolls aren’t choice edibles, but they do add a pleasing texture to many dishes.
More to Hunt and Gather Across the Winter Landscape
Mushroom Foraging Safety
If you find an oyster-like mushroom on pines, hemlocks, or any conifer, avoid it. You’ve likely encountered angel wing (Pleurocybella porrigens), which is toxic. For any mushroom hunting, be sure you can confidently identify your fungi before consuming it.
As is true with the vast majority of wild edible mushrooms, don’t eat oyster mushrooms, wood ears, or amber jelly rolls raw, as gastrointestinal issues can occur.
Bruce and Elaine Ingram live in Troutville, Virginia. They’re the authors of Living the Locavore Lifestyle. For more information on this book and others they’ve written, email them at BruceIngramOutdoors@Gmail.com.
