🍄👨🍳 Hunting & Cooking Morel Mushrooms
During the spring, there occurs a great northern migration across the North American continent. While plenty of animals are making their way, it is the blooming of morel mushrooms that pulls myself and a few friends into the woods between April and June.
Though I had heard of this type of fungus about eight or nine years ago, this is only my third season tracking them for myself. Fact is, I don’t really like mushrooms. Morels are the few variants that I will cook and eat. Something about the description of the texture and flavor lead me to give them a try a number of years ago.
As it would turn out, a lot of people I know actually like these things! It’s been easy to find people to share them with in my family. One of my aunts had recently acquired an air fryer and we wanted to use it for morels this season.
Preparation and Cooking
Frying morels is a fairly typical way to prepare these mushrooms. I’ve eaten them sautéed but personally it’s not my thing due to the texture.
As you can see in the picture, there were a few decent sized ones to cut into manageable pieces in addition to typical finds. I recommend cutting smaller ones in half so they are like the size of a chicken finger (or nuggets if they are really small) and the sizable specimens like those I have in my hands can be cut down into thirds or fourths. You could ever choose to separate large stalk sections and the meaty tops for more individual pieces or if you have a preference for the different parts of the morel.
We applied a flour base after soaking the mushrooms for a bit to wash off dirt or any bugs that might have found their way into the crevices of the caps. After this first layer was applied, we egg wash them and then dipped each piece into a mix of breadcrumbs and panko that had been run through a processor to make them finer.
Once the breading layers were applied, it was time to fire up the fryer. We used a Nuwave air fryer which uses circulating heat to cook. We lightly apply cooking spray/oil to the mushrooms to help them along but I want to emphasis how little it really was compared to deep frying or pan frying.
The pieces only needed about 4–5 minutes at 360 degrees a side and were delicious when they were finished.
