How To Find, Identify & Eat Chicken Of The Woods 🍄

Hello my friends and welcome back to our channel. Home is where our heart is. I hope you're having a beautiful day wherever you are in the world and thank you all for joining me here today on this absolutely splendid sunny day where I'm absolutely blessed to be spending my time out in the countryside looking for the fantastic fungi known as chicken of the woods. Chicken of the woods is an almost golden wild edible mushroom that tastes delicious. It's super easy to find so if you're interested then come for a walk through the countryside with me and we'll learn how to find the chicken in the woods, how to identify it and then we'll even learn how to cook it and eat it. So firstly to find any species of fungi we need to understand two things. One, their habitat and two, what times of year do they grow in? What seasons do these fungi appear? Now chicken of the woods can be found all across Europe and North America and it starts popping up in late spring all the way through into the autumn time and it loves to grow in woodlands with large broad trees such as this woodland just over here in the distance. It's most commonly found on oak trees, sweet chestnut trees and cherry trees. So let's head down towards that woodland and have a little look. So now we're down closer to this woodland we can see that it's definitely full of larger trees and that's what we want because chicken of the woods thrives on these much broader hardwood trees. Now this is a great sign, there's a huge tree here that's blown over and collapsed and when I look in I can see this woodland isn't frequently walked through or maintained and it's gone completely back to nature. So let's head in this woodland and look for the chicken of the woods. So now we're in our woodland we need to walk through it mindfully paying attention so we don't walk past potential find of the chicken of the woods. To do this unlike looking for plants and trees where we can kind of walk and scan as we please as we travel through the woodlands with fungi with mushrooms we have to take a much slower approach. Me personally I stop every now and then and just take it all in. I look up and down the trees and make sure to look around the trees because you never know a big huge glowing golden chicken of the woods could literally be on the other side of a tree next to you. So take your time, be present, pay attention and mindfully navigate through the woods scanning every bit you can. Now the great thing about chicken of the woods is it's almost a glowing golden colour so as soon as your eyes scan over it, ding, you'll clock onto it and see it glowing in the tree almost like a fungi holy grail. I often tell my children to go off into the woods and try and find me the golden mushroom and they run away laughing playing some form of Mario Brothers game. Can you see it over there in the background? I'm pretty sure we've stumbled across some chicken of the woods. Can you see how much it jumps out at the eye from afar? Now that's the glorious thing about heading out and foraging and understanding your local ecosystem around you is when you take all this knowledge and then apply it and head out and then you actually find what you're looking for. There's a great sense of joy to be found in that and when you find your first chicken of the woods don't be surprised if you let out a little squeal like Ned Flanders when he finds purple drapes. Wow we have two great examples here of chicken of the woods. Can you see how it's almost glowing on the tree just calling out to us to come and harvest it and have it for dinner? Chicken of the woods is an incredible mushroom because it's one of the most delicious mushrooms and it's so easy to identify. If you've never even harvested a single wild mushroom from the wild this is a great one to start with. I promise you you'll be able to get out there and collect some of this chicken of the woods with ease because it's so easy to identify. You see it's bright yellow and it has these orange bands across it this orange like waves kind of like a tie-dye t-shirt. This lets us know that this chicken of the woods is young and fresh because these orange bands these orange colours fade away as it ages and when they faded away the chicken of the woods can become like woody and tough so it's not its best to eat. When we find it fresh like this with the orange we know it's time to have a nice dinner and of course when you squeeze it it's plump and fresh and soft to the touch. Now one important way good way to identify the chicken of the woods is also underneath these discs there's no gills. You know in the shop bought mushrooms when you look underneath they have gills. These have tiny almost microscopic holes that the paws fall out it almost appears smooth so they have no gills underneath and they grow in shelves. You see they look like little fungi shelves in the tree this lets me know that we've definitely got chicken of the woods. What an incredible find it didn't take long to head out in the countryside now we've found some of this we're going to harvest it and eat it but let's just cut some off first and do a double check just to make sure we've got chicken of the woods so I'm confident that I found chicken of the woods and you're confident at home that you can take this knowledge and apply it to the natural world around you and find yourself some of this delicious fungi too. So it's super easy to harvest yourself some chicken of the woods ideally you want to do it with a knife and not pull away the whole fungi from the tree because we want to leave a little stump because this is said that it can help the fungi recover and potentially grow back. Now this bottom slice down here is nice and soft so this is the one that I'm going to take a nice chop along the base it comes away with ease look at this beautiful fungi. So what I like to do when I'm out collecting fungi is I have a mental checklist that I create for each fungi that I'm going to collect so I'm definitely confident that I've got the right species so our checklist for chicken of the woods is firstly is it a beautiful almost golden yellow colour with these hints of orange bands. Secondly does it grow in shelves on either a living or a dead tree this one we've just harvested has come from that split where the branches split away from the tree when you look at the bottom if it has gills it's not chicken of the woods if it has tiny little paws then we know that we have found chicken of the woods. Now there's a few wise words of caution of wisdom when it comes to collecting chicken of the woods. Firstly if you've never eaten this mushroom before when you do eat some just eat a little section and wait 24 hours to make sure you're not allergic to it and then secondly some people say that you can't harvest this mushroom from a yew tree. Now some people say you can some people say you can't. Us personally we don't harvest any chicken of woods from the yew trees just to be safe. Now if you're not familiar with yew trees make sure to check out our yew tree video because it's an awesome video and it teaches you everything you need to know about identifying the yew tree as well as all the awesome things to do with the yew tree. So now that we definitely know that we've got some chicken of the woods let's cook some up and have a snack. Cheers! Fresh cut elderflower tea that's the best herbal tea you can have. Now to to eat chicken in the woods to prepare a wild mushroom to eat is super super simple just get yourself a little scrubbing brush. I'm just using a toothbrush here and some water and brush off all that debris that you don't want. Same thing at home just put it over the sink dip it in the water under the tap and brush off any nasties that are on there and if any bits don't come off just give it a good scrub and just take off a little bit of skin with it doesn't matter. This one is impeccably clean I picked it because it looks delicious and also clean all that debris is coming off with ease making it nice and clean and of course the rest of the germs are going to be killed when we're cooking it. Today we're just going to simply fry the chicken of the woods because I encourage you to if you've simple recipe so then you can get a good idea of just what the mushroom itself tastes like before you add other ingredients. So we're just going to fry this when it's nice and cooked. Add a generous serving of butter to your pan get your pocket knife out your pocket. I've got a handy little burner here that I've had for a few years now it's very useful my Gordon Ramsay be careful when putting it on there then things are never very well balanced. Now I really like my chicken in the woods in thin slices I think it tastes nicer like that so I'm going to cut into thin slices. All wild mushrooms should be cooked I'm just going to break this up don't need to look so fresh. I'm going to cook it really well I've got to make sure to cook chicken in the woods really well. I liked my I like my mushrooms really well cooked anyway any woody hard bits this is bits a bit woody back to nature there's some insects such as the hairy fungus beetle that love chicken of the woods as well as animals like deer. Now this is the best meat alternative that I've ever tried and I've tried a lot of them believe me this is to me it's uncanny how much it's like chicken even when you peel it away the texture is like chicken. So we're going to fry it aside so it's really nice and crispy. Just like chicken, chicken in the woods is extremely rich in protein I believe by weight it's about half the amount of protein that would be in a chicken breast so chicken breast is roughly 25 grams of protein so it's got 12 and a half grams of protein in the same weight of chicken in the woods it's rich in many vitamins and minerals it's been studied medicinally and been shown to be anti-inflammatory and uh antifungal surprisingly considering it's a fungus funny old world of fungi isn't it when it comes to the medicinal properties of fungi I find it absolutely fascinating because for example the jelly ear the wood ear is proven when you eat it after that it protects you from radiation a high amount of radiation for a good amount of time how crazy is that check out our video all about the jelly ear and we cook it into a nice soup. Some horses running past I'm going to add some sea salt to this just a hint of sea salt and if you see my salt green it's because we've infused it with pre-cornered leek you could do the same with wild garlic or any any other herb you just dry it and infuse it but you want to use one that's got a powerful aromatic flavor like ground ivy or yarrow. Yarrow is famously infused with salt I'm absolutely starving me and Steli have been living fasted we've been fasting you know what fasting is we've been fasting now for like six months not as a diet that's like a lifestyle choice and uh it's amazing intermediate fasting I definitely recommend it because when it becomes time to eat when you put food in your mouth it's just such a joy of flavor it's incredible and it's worth it just for the flavor alone and my fast has gone well over it's time because we've been out here doing this so I'm breaking my fast with an elderflower tea and some fresh chicken in the woods from that very tree check it out I think it might be time for a taste test to see it's gone that lovely shade orange dark crispy orange right let's try not to spill it everywhere oh it's so good so good it tastes like chicken from what I remember chicken tasted anyway one more bit it's so good you've got to get out there and try this everyone if you haven't find that confidence within get out there and get some chicken in the woods wow it's definitely the most delicious fungi you can have and it's easy to identify when it comes to plants and trees I love plants and trees so I can get out there harvest them and eat the bits that I enjoy when it comes to fungus I don't like to put all that thought into it like will this kill me so I like to just just go for simple fun guys and chicken in the woods it's the easiest fun guy around anyway to people it's getting dark so I'm going to go climb up this hill and just on the top is the south downs and I'm going to enjoy my dinner and watch the sunset you take care of yourselves at home don't forget to do all them modern well things such as like comment subscribe ring the bell follow us on Facebook and Instagram and if you want to help support this channel further consider joining our Patreon it's been a pleasure and I'll see you all next time peace